Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Actually, the Government of the Northwest Territories does not receive money exclusively for aboriginal education. The only program that we have where there is something like that is that we administer, on behalf of the federal government, the University and College Entrance Program, which is designed for status and Inuit people only, according to the federal government. They give us a certain block of money. Once that block is gone, that’s all that there is for that program. That is the only program we have where money is specifically identified for education for...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have already committed to discuss the issue with the RCMP. There may be some cost implications that I might have to deal with, but I will certainly let the Member know the results of my discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our government is really interested in making sure that kids are well educated in how to make healthy choices. If the Members will remember, earlier this week the Minister of MACA, along with the Minister of Health and Social Services and myself kicked off the program just about healthy choices. We will certainly continue to enforce the need for more education and active living. The Member has raised a good point. Certainly, in my meeting with the chief superintendent in a couple of weeks, I will raise the issue with him and see if there isn’t some way that we can...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can tell the Member that Education is working with Municipal and Community Affairs to try to schedule the addition of water to the school at the same time that MACA works with the community to get water treatment into that community. So we are hoping that the planning will be this year and we will be able to move fairly quickly by next year to address the water issue and to address the space issue. There needs to be an addition to accommodate the high school in particular in that community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; the engineer’s report is out. The engineers are confident that the school is safe. It is not in any danger of a situation developing that would be unsafe for the students or the staff in the building. We are going to have to do more work this summer to assess just what sorts of repairs need to be undertaken. It appears that one of the biggest problems was that when the addition was added, they didn’t put an expansion joint between the two parts of the school. So they are moving at different rates, the two parts. How that is going to be handled...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Right now the stage we are at is trying to decide how much of the act we need to open up. We are taking a look at our act in comparison to other acts across Canada to get a sense of where we might be lacking or where there might be room to go to the public and say is this an area that you want us to look at. So I’ve been discussing with the department just what the approach would be, whether we’re going to do a full-blown public consultation of the whole act or if we would just narrow its scope to the areas where we’ve had highlighted now that there may be problems....

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this point we are just in the process of beginning to start to get the statistics on the activities of the community justice committees. We have only recently been able to provide all communities with that $20,000 in extra funding for them to hire a part-time coordinator. Many of them didn’t have the resources before or even the ability to collect the statistics of what they were doing themselves. That was one of the reasons for looking at this as a needed investment.

Now the committees have someone or should have someone available who can start to collect some...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member raised this issue with me some time ago and in taking a look at the Condominium Act, I had to agree that it looked like there might be some area that we were not looking at. So I’ve asked the department to compare our Condominium Act with those acts across Canada. I think the area that we might be somewhat lacking in is whether or not the reserve fund is considered to be adequate. That’s the area that I think they’re going to have to examine; whether or not we should insist, like Alberta does, that there be an independent review by an auditor as to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. With me today I have the deputy minister, Mr. Don Cooper; and, the director of finance, Ms. Kim Schofield.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have to follow the guidelines set out by the federal government for the program. I can tell Members we are nowhere near satisfying the demand. I believe this year we had a waiting list of people who did not get any funding through the program because there was not enough money in the program to address all of the requests. The other problem with the program is it will not provide funding to Metis people. That’s something I have consistently written to the federal Minister and demanded that they reconsider their approach to this program, but I have not been...