Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to the finance delegation here today in the committee. I do commend the department for a prudent fiscal strategy in terms of tightening the belt for the upcoming year. I do have some concerns in areas such as health. Those are areas in which we’ve got to be a little bit more careful in terms of the term “tightening.”

I think health is one of those areas where you have to make investments ongoing, otherwise you fall behind, I guess, the total plan of healing people. Making the proper investments in the community in terms of all types of infrastructure, I think...

The Minister indicated a safe schools plan. I guess the question we should ask is: When will this be implemented? Are we seeing this early on in 2013 or in the latter part of 2013?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today, in my Member’s statement, I talked about anti-bullying legislation. It’s unfortunate that tragedies usually put a lens on subjects such as this. I think the public and also Members need to be reassured that we’re working towards good legislation.

My question for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment is: Maybe giving us an update, what’s happening in the department as we’re preparing for this anti-bullying legislation for the Northwest Territories?

Thank you. I do appreciate the Minister for clarification here. I’ll leave it at that, Madam Chair, and let other colleagues dial in. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome again here to the witness table. As I indicated in my opening comments or general comments, and I know that has been discussed in committee format, the demographics and the population changes that we’re seeing in the territory are shifting. As resources or work occurs, people move to those areas. We know the Sahtu is going to be greatly influenced by many oil projects here in the coming year and we see that the funding formula for communities is not changing with what we think is population change. This has also been spoken to, I believe, as well, with the NWT...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is all very good information, and I think many parents, many students out there are looking forward to seeing this come forward. As the department is preparing the final steps, the final journey, so to speak, and the consulting piece and where amendments are going to be taking place, who is going to be invited to the table to be doing this in the consulting phase, and will Members have an opportunity to be a participant?

I think what the Minister indicated here is that it sounds like we’ve got legislation ongoing here and there’s talk about a safe school plan in a bill format. I guess the question I need to ask the Minister is: Why are we doing both at the same time? Should one not follow the other?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A number of months ago this House took a stance on bullying. We wore the colours, we each spoke passionately on why we needed to make a stand against bullying, and the department listened. Shortly thereafter, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment joined Regular Members in a promise to come forward with legislation to address this issue for the latter part of 2013.

So why am I bringing this up again? Well, it seems that a young BC teenager’s life has been taken away and the world has gone viral once again. The question of why this happened is swirling around...

That is quite an alarming number. Anybody who has a mortgage, who owes money, knows that $2.9 million being financed does have a cost to it. That cost is borne by you and I. It’s borne by the taxpayers. At the end of the day, it affects programs and dollars we don’t have. We don’t have the ability to finance large sums of money like that at any given time. More alarming than that number is the fact that there’s a substantial amount of money that is debt owed to us from a long period of time. Can the Minister indicate, out of that number, how much is owed to us that is over six months old?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Welcome back, Mr. Speaker and my fellow colleagues from across this great territory, as we roll up our sleeves for a very energetic and hopefully productive couple of weeks.

With all the recent municipal elections and school board action in the past month, I am really looking forward to harnessing all the new focus and new ideas that were shared amongst so many great civic leaders. From Iqaluit to Whitehorse, from Fort Smith to Inuvik, the North was a myriad of topics that were all designed to improve our everyday lives.

We wish to take this time to thank the many brave...