Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Bob McLeod will be absent from the House today to attend the state memorial service for the late Jim Prentice in Calgary, Alberta. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair, I do.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, to my right I have Mr. David Stewart, who is the deputy minister of Finance, and to my left I have Mr. Sandy Kalgutkar, who is the deputy secretary to the FMB. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do, Mr. Chair. I am here to present Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 1, 2016-2017. These estimates provide for an increase of $591,000 to the operations budget.

Amongst other things, these Supplementary Estimates include:

funding of $308,000 for permafrost monitoring research and development;

funding of $285,000 for operating costs of the newly expanded Jimmy Erasmus Seniors’ Home in Behchoko; and funding of $108,000 for the Aboriginal Justice Strategy for a training event; and

enhanced capacity building.

That concludes my opening remarks, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is absolutely right, there is some concerns with the caribou and it's coming to a point where the caribou actually have no chance with all the technology that we have in getting out to the caribou and that's allowed their numbers to dwindle along with a number of other things, but there is some funding available to help community harvesters. As to the exact, I would have to confirm that, but I do know there's money available to help harvesters go and do a community harvest.

Mr. Speaker, the other programs that are supported are the Community Harvesters Assistance Program, our local Wildlife Committee, Take a Kid Trapping as the Member said, and Harvesting Program, the Western Harvesters' Assistance Program, the Hunters and Trappers Disaster Compensation Program, and the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission coverage for resource harvesters. So again, that is a wide topic of areas that it covers, and I will get the exact dollar figure and share it with the Members.

Mr. Speaker, in the last year we've had over 40 schools across the Northwest Territories take advantage of this program. We've had about 1,500 northern youth who were educated in some type of aspect of trapping and traditional way of life. One of the examples would be the JBK Elementary School in Fort Smith. They've been participating in this program since it started in 2002 and they had a winter camp in Thebacha and exposed students from K to 6 and staff over the course of eight days to trapping and other harvesting techniques.

Also, Colville Lake is another good example. They have a fully...

Each Take a Kid Trapping project, they're required to submit a report with financial statement included. All of the individual project reports are then rolled into the annual Take a Kid Trapping Report.

I said the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment has committed to working with this group as they go forward with this project, and I will make that commitment from this table as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to use this opportunity to recognize and thank two pages from Inuvik Twin Lakes. We've got Kyra McDonald with us today and Jazelle Pokiak, and I want to thank them and all the other hardworking pages. I also want to recognize Mr. Winston Moses as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.