Kevin A. Menicoche

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I actually don’t have any further questions at this point. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My question today is for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Last week I spoke about taxation on aboriginal education that’s due to take place April 1st. I was just wondering if the Minister knows how much of an impact it will have upon our students and is it actually SFA funding that’s impacted as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can appreciate that some of the targets the departments are having difficulty matching is because of the recruitment skills or skill level. A lot has to do with education, but just in terms of our business planning, as we’re going through the business plans here in the Legislative Assembly this month, what I’m not seeing in our business plans is actual affirmative action targets or recruitment targets for northerners. Apparently it used to be in the business plans, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister why these targets are not in the business plans this year...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to take this opportunity to speak about something that is pretty eminent to the residents of Fort Simpson. The governments plan to shut down the Pointe Hall, or the Deh Cho Hall, in Fort Simpson in 2006. Apparently, they are basing their studies on some phantom report that no one has ever seen. I don’t know if they have seen it themselves, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps the Minister can speak about that, because constituents of mine -- the Village of Fort Simpson -- has sort of been asking for this report and apparently it has been in the system for some...

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Today my questions are for the Minister of FMBS, Mr. Floyd Roland, with regard to affirmative action. Some of the few statistics that are out there, Mr. Speaker, are some 53 percent of aboriginal people were employed in January as opposed to 83 percent of non-aboriginals. That means that a heck of a lot of our aboriginals aren’t working out there and our government has an affirmative action program that is not working as well. How much of a priority is the affirmative action policy for our government? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, vote in favour of this motion. The main concern is that one of the goals and objectives of this line item is to provide safe custody and detention for adults. I am not convinced that the safety of the adults who are passing through the facility will be taken care of with the reduction of services. Thank you very much.

The only difference now is he has a new pool and we don’t.

---Laughter

Thank you very much. Can the Minister repeat what the plans were for the $1 million? I dropped my earpiece when he was talking about it. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Just reflecting over the past year-and-a-half, and justice certainly does play a big role in the Nahendeh riding, which I represent. We have six communities in my riding and it’s a huge ground to cover, especially when we’re talking about law enforcement. There is a lot of moving around for the members, fall-time and springtime is rather difficult because of breakup and freeze-up. Particularly in Fort Simpson and the communities that they service, one of the biggest issues this year was they were cutting one member and we fought it hard, Mr. Chair. We tried...