Kevin A. Menicoche

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Last week in the House I spoke about Fort Simpson resident Ms. Sharon Allen and her starting up the chapter of MADD. It was her desire to keep our community safe by targeting drunk drivers and initiating a check stop like she did last fall.

I would like to ask the Minister of Transportation, how does our department assist with individuals that privately volunteer with such a well-known organization, such as MADD, in terms of keeping our drunk driving statistics down? Of course, there has been a bit of a rise there lately. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I rise this afternoon to commemorate the life and work of the late Sarah Hardisty, a well-respected Aboriginal elder and respected artist of Jean Marie River.

On a special note, she created the band of porcupine quill work that adorns our own territorial Mace.

Sarah Hardisty was born in Jean Marie River in July 1924 when the community was little more than a summer gathering place. Her family lived a traditional life, spending summers in Jean Marie and winters at Fish Lake. Although Sarah recalls many hardships, she fondly recalled a much simpler time and...

Mr. Chairman, that was my next question. Are all these programs fully subscribed, because I, as well, wanted to kind of build on the momentum of our NWT and northern athletes, especially the one from Alberta as well. I think a lot of the children saw it, as well, so how can we continue that momentum as we develop our northern youth and northern athletes? I don’t know if there is movement in the federal area, as well, to help out with the future Canadian athletes. Like I said, if there is a question there, that will be the one.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m sorry; I have the wrong page up.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Just with the School of Community Government, I was contacted by one of my remote communities. They have to, I think, pay their own way to attend a lot of these training functions. Particularly to Yellowknife it gets quite expensive. I guess the issue here is, they probably do it already, but can they do more training in the regions and the communities just to reduce the cost of those almost like fly-in communities?

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I guess I would ask if the department would consider, during their next campaign, to involve local chapters of MADD and SADD for drunk driving awareness. Thank you.

Just something to be aware of and hopefully the department tracks that. Yes, there is higher employment but that means there is low employment, meaning it will be harder for people to get jobs. I don’t see the correlation here at all. I don’t know if they can track it and maybe a year from now raise it, should it impact us negatively having more people on income support as opposed to unemployment insurance, Mr. Chair. Thanks.

I certainly look forward to the update from the Minister, because the library is still called a resource centre. It’s kind of a shame when our children can go to the library and they cannot really look at books and sign out books. They can do it on-line, but it’s kind of cumbersome for the younger children to do that. It will be a good thing once we can establish a full library in Fort Simpson.

One of the other suggestions that I did make several years ago was to classify it as a regional library and put it in legislation. It then becomes a funded facility, but that’s one of the ways that we...

Thank you very much. When it comes to e-learning, I did visit the Sunchild e-learning program. A great initiative. I tried to get that same type of programming not only for youth but young adults in Fort Liard, but at that time there was a bandwidth issue, so we weren’t able to pursue it any further. I know there are still some issues in the smaller communities with bandwidth and that once those are addressed we can certainly move forward with the e-learning program on a small scale.

I’m certainly supportive of e-learning. I’ve seen the value of it. Like I said, I visited the Sunchild Reserve...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize my number one constituent, my partner, Lucyanne Kendo, and my step-daughter, Brittany Jewel. Welcome to the gallery and to the proceedings. It’s great to see you here. Mahsi.