Frederick Blake Jr.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today we are having a theme day on education. One of the challenges our students are facing today has to do with social passing.

A few of my constituents, as of late, have brought up the concerns of their children dealing with social passing. Many times our students, even though they are not prepared for the grade, are put in. They are just very concerned that we are setting up our students for failure.

They look back on when they used to go to school and how they had to work hard, study hard in order to pass the grades. If they didn’t do that work, then they were held...

I will be willing to work with the Minister and also the community. I know they have shown interest in getting this work and making sure that it’s done and in place, whether it’s early June. If the department is willing, we’ll make sure that happens. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just one more thing there. The lookout tower at Shiltee Rock, is the department going to work with the community to ensure that it’s built and in place before the fire season?

Mr. Chair, over this past summer here we spent in the neighbourhood of $60 million, so I think we should have, as a department, put more funds into this. We know the dry season is upon us. I think that we should have budgeted for that. To spend, whether it’s $100,000 to get all the communities in the NWT prepared, I think that’s good planning. That should be undertaken this spring. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just real quickly here, possibly under conservation planning. As we all know, the Gwich’in have a forest management plan. I’d just like to ask the Minister, as they developed the plan, did they take into account foreign species that have lived here over the last year or two? I’ve noticed a lot of wood coming in from either the Yukon or even further down to Inuvik and distributed to the communities. I just think of our management plan and are these sorts of things taken into consideration.

Quite a while back there was a lot of concern, whether it was pine beetles or other...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a few comments. I know I did provide some earlier, but as I mentioned, the community of Tsiigehtchic once had a suppression crew and the forest fires are a big concern in the coming year with a possible dry season coming again. I think it’s very important that we go back to the past agreement that we had with the community and the department to re-enter that agreement and make sure that we do have a crew on hand this summer to be prepared to transfer to any region that may need their assistance over the summer.

As we discovered last year, as we rushed around...

Just thinking back, you know, one of the reasons I believe that social passing was brought into play here was because of our graduation rates. In the past our graduation rates were much lower. This is no reason to have social passing in our education.

When will the department review and revise the Education Act to deal with social passing? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, one of the highlights of work in our communities is celebrating success. Today I want to acknowledge Annah Hanthorn from Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories.

Nineteen-year-old Annah has captured gold in the 7.5 kilometre cross-country skiing at the Canada Winter Games in Prince George.

Annah has trained in the Yukon for the past few years and is at the Canada Winter Games representing Team Yukon; however, we share in her accomplishments as her roots are in the Northwest Territories.

Her younger brother is competing for Team NWT. Judah Hanthorn is at the Games for cross-country...

I know last year the community was very interested in negotiating this, so is the Minister willing to either sole source it to the community or negotiate with the community to ensure this is in place before this spring season? Thank you.

Many times we always hear that we don’t have funds, but when an emergency arises, all of a sudden, whether its $2 million, $10 million or $60 million it just seems to pop out of nowhere. I think it’s very important we set aside… You know, it’s not a large amount of money. Fifty to 100 thousand dollars is a small price to pay to have these communities up to speed and prepared. That’s the main thing that we have to be for this coming season. Thank you, Mr. Chair.