David Ramsay

Thank you, committee. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I agree with the Minister that the government could look at moving some jobs and some things outside of the capital city. I agree with decentralization as a principle of this government, but why would you do something with a program that affects children and families and most of the referrals are out of this region and north of the city of Yellowknife? I don’t understand the rationale behind that. If you want to move government jobs, that’s one thing, but when you start messing around with a program that is supposed to help children and families, then I have to take...

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Agreed. Thank you, committee, and I would like to thank the Minister and Mr. Voytilla for being with us today. Thank you. What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Minister.

Agreed. We are going to go to schedules first before we go into the clause by clause. If I could draw your attention to page 3, it starts on schedule, part I, vote I, operations expenditures, total supplementary appropriation for operations expenditures, $20.520 million.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. How could the Minister make the assertion that moving this program will have no impact on the clients when we haven’t seen anything in terms of what the impact is going to be and the needs of the clients are going to be in terms of speech therapy, paediatric support, ideology, psychology and other educational needs? These children need responsiveness. They need action right now. If they are in a setting where they can’t get that and they have to take a flight to Yellowknife and try to get squeezed into an appointment three months from now, that’s not good enough...

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you. Now to the preamble.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Minister.