Frederick Blake Jr.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just really briefly under the timber permits and licences. I know it’s starting to be a concern here in my riding with people having to go to their renewable resource officers for timber permits for driftwood. I recall when this item came to the RRCs quite a while back here, that it was supposed to be just on a volunteer basis, but now it seems they’re turning this over to mandatory. You know, it’s more or less to see what volume of driftwood was taken just for needs was what they were telling us at the time. It’s starting to be an issue that now it’s mandatory for people...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too stand here in support of the Deline Got’ine people.

Back in 2008 as I worked with the Gwich’in on their self-government agreement, I recall the negotiators saying that the Deline people have decided to have a stand-alone agreement. That is the first agreement in this territory, much like the people in the Yukon who have this style of community government. It is working in the Yukon. I see a great opportunity for the Deline people.

I believe that this process that they have set up was the right decision for their community and I look forward to the progress that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned in my statement earlier today, social passing is a huge issue in my riding. Many parents would like to see their children having more homework, more projects that they have to do and trying harder. Right now it seems that their children don’t have to try and yet they’re put up one grade higher every year even though they’re not at that level.

So, I’d like to ask the Minister, why did the department move towards social passing? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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.