Robert Villeneuve

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I won’t speak too much about this anymore until we find out what happened and what kind of a strategy rolls out of this. Maybe I just want to ask the Minister when is this strategy going to come to some fruition, I guess, and when is the summit going to happen? You know, another caribou summit, aboriginal summit, housing summit; you know, every time there’s a crisis situation, let’s have a summit. So anyway, what’s the deadline for this strategy anyway? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that the $222,000 be deleted from the Department of Transportation airports activity in Supplementary Appropriation, No. 1, 2006-2007. Mahsi, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I can understand that, but didn’t we save any money on the winter ice road maintenance because of the short winter ice road season? Isn’t there some kind of a balance? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I’m sure a lot of the other Members here would agree, I couldn’t stress the importance more of having an independent, objective review committee in place to do this whole human resource amalgamation review, to do a review of the Employment Equity Program, to do a review of the Affirmative Action Program. I think that would be something that this government has got to prioritize and ensure northerners that the review committee is going to be at arm's length from this government to ensure there is objectivity, and I don’t think northerners are going to accept...

Mr. Speaker, affirmative action, employment equity, it’s all the same to me, but in the Human Resources Services Agreement that was drafted up in 2004 there’s continuous improvement where review teams will be established on a regular basis with the goal of reviewing the service performance and identifying opportunities for process and improvement, and the membership on the review teams will be fluid to reflect the issues of current interest or concerns, Mr. Speaker. I think that’s one of the most important aspects of this whole human resource amalgamation, is to make sure that, you know, we...

No, that’s fine.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I just want to talk about this government’s approach to achieve a public service that is more representative of the population it supposedly serves. When this government introduced a new approach to developing a home-grown public service back in 2002 by proposing to phase out the affirmative action policy and taking the new employment equity approach because, "It will be based on a philosophy that employees will hire a more representative workforce because it made good business and operational sense to do so, Mr. Speaker."

Mr. Speaker, we are now four years...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If there is no grant-in-kind, if you bring the library up to standard, the Open Door Society up to standard, the cultural centre and the Deh Cho Hall up to standard, who pays for that? Is that coming out of the government coffers because we are such good people or the building is of such high sentimental value to the community? What are the reasons for the government to agree to do all these upgrades at no charge? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My next question is how much of this $3.5 million is the government contributing in-kind to all these other facilities to bring them up to standard to keep their doors open? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don’t want to downplay the importance of caribou in the territory or in Nunavut or in the Yukon, that’s for sure, but I think a better community-based comprehensive approach has to be taken. A traditional knowledge approach to how we manage caribou has got to be taken up by this government and maybe that’s why it’s in decline, is because we’re just listening to too many biologists and people that just have never hunted a day in their lives and they’re telling us how to manage our caribou and our wildlife. I think that’s the approach that we really have to incorporate...