Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am looking at page 315. The line item is community planning. There seems to be a catastrophic drop-off of funding for this line from $421,000 in 2015-16 to $54,000 in the budget next year. Can someone explain to me why there is this ongoing reduction under the community planning function for MACA? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. This past weekend I had the pleasure of playing hockey on the ice surface at the new Ko Gocho Complex in Behchoko. The WIMPs, or Weekly Improvement for Mediocre Players league, was invited to play a game on the new ice surface on Saturday evening with a team of young players from Behchoko. Special thanks to Dolphus Nitsiza and Chris Hunt for organizing the game. The WIMPS have been around since the early 1980s, and I am proud to say that I have been playing with them for 30 years. Yes, after 30 years I can still occasionally push the puck into the net, but more...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am looking at the same page, 254. I see that we collected a whopping $4,000 for access to information and protection of privacy fees. I know this was an issue that was posed in the discussion paper that came from our government recently, but why do we even bother, because I am sure the administrative costs of collecting the money is probably even greater than $4,000. Is this something that the Minister is looking at in terms of updating the act and working towards more open government? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I believe this is where the rental office is located, in the Department of Justice. There has been some discussion in this House about the backlog of cases there, and it does not look like there is any additional funding for the rental office in next year's budget. In fact, it has actually been declining over time, if you go back to 201516. What is the plan to deal with this backlog, if we are not actually going to increase the funding for this function? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that answer from the Minister. Is this something that is going to be done in time for the business plans for next year so that we could see an allocation within the business plan for seniors' involvement in organized sports activities? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I think that was a maybe.

---Laughter

We may have to pursue that further. So one last question: can the Minister confirm then that, when his department and he himself talks about full funding for junior kindergarten, that's really in reference to the current formulas which do not include junior kindergarten students? So full funding does not really include junior kindergarten students? Can the Minister say yes or no? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I know I have raised the issue of support for seniors in sports. I think I got some kind of a commitment out of the Minister that this was something that they were going to evaluate. Could the Minister tell us where their current thinking is at, if we can get support for seniors in sports? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, I appreciate that, and the sooner the better because I think there's quite a bit of work that's going to have to be done to evaluate the proposals and get things up and going before the current contract ends. So I urge the department to move forward as quickly as they possibly can with this to make sure that we've got continuity of service. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I can do that, but I don't think it is going to be any more complicated than something like, "Please explain what the relationship is between the Northwest Territories Centre for Geomatics, the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Optic Link, and the Northern Canadian Centre of Excellence for Remote Sensing and the timing of those initiatives." Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'm just wondering if the Minister might like to have a conversation with himself about switching this over to the Lands department.