Robert Bouchard

Clauses 1 to 25.

---Clauses 1 through 25 inclusive approved

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m having difficulty with the harmonization concept. The Minister is telling me there’s harmonization when I know, in fact, in Alberta a pick-up is a pick-up. It doesn’t matter if you’re towing a trailer or not, it’s still not required to have a Class 3 licence. As well as the issue of licence plates, in Alberta they need a licence plate on the front. When you cross the border now, you have to put a licence plate on the front. So I don’t know how the harmonization is working.

Can the Minister commit to look at these regulations and the fact that they aren’t harmonized...

Clauses 111 to 120.

---Clauses 111 through 120 inclusive approved

Committee agree?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask some questions to the Premier about the NGO. It looks like he was very well versed in the NGO field today and I had some questions about he talked about the mandates of NGOs and that they don’t look at that.

I’m wondering, because I’ve heard some concerns from the Hay River NGOs that are in that area, that the territorial NGOs that are set up and established in Yellowknife are not providing funding out into the regions.

Can the Minister please provide me some direction on how those NGOs’ mandates are looked at, and if they’re providing a territorial...

I’ve received information from one of the organizations, the Head Start program, that basically they had been informed that they are now a zero to three not a three/four, and I guess they’re quite disturbed in the fact that they have been running this for over 20 years. They were asked to realign after the Department of Education has done that.

How can the Minister justify that we’re changing the focus to zero to three when these organizations were established to do three to four?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week I had questions for the Minister of Education on junior kindergarten. I want to follow up with some questions about the funding for other programs that are going to be affected by junior kindergarten.

Has the Department of Education looked into the effects of taking four-year-olds out of the systems we have? I’ll use Hay River as an example, obviously. We have a playschool, we have Growing Together and we have a Head Start program. These are programs that are affected by that, so I’m wondering if the department has looked into the effect of the enrolment in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t support the amendment. Like I indicated earlier, I think status quo is the easiest process. Either we vote for the one year or we vote for status quo.

I did hear this concept of putting elections together, but I think we should keep our status quo the way it is, or this motion moves forward. But I think if we start to look at…because I heard just as many people go, let’s go early, let’s go six months or a year early. I guess the point is that I don’t support this motion.

Like I indicated in the statement, we could figure out 50 different ways to do it. Let’s just...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would be very interested to see how the money is being accounted for. Just because we provide money and then we just leave it at that, we should be following the audit trail of where the money is being spent; what money is being sent out to the regions; if you’re a territorial organization, what are you doing territorially to represent all the people in the Northwest Territories. I guess I would like to see the territorial government fulfil the mandate.

How is the money audited for the territorial government for these organizations? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I kind of disagree with the concept that we’re funding these territorial NGOs but the money isn’t getting out to the regions, they’re not providing money out to these other organizations that are basically affiliates of theirs. A lot of the funds are used to employ people in Yellowknife here, and other organizations are struggling for funds.

I’m struggling with the question because I don’t want to out any one NGO, but is the government looking into the mandates of territorial NGOs, looking at where they put their money regionally?