Robert Villeneuve

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...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to the respect of the caribou mismanagement strategy here for $525,000, I know that this government here has been studying caribou right until they’re blue in the face here and we’ve had so many studies on caribou, you know, right until they’re blue in the nose. We have stacks of information on caribou numbers, migration routes and community consultation processes and all this, and now we’re spending another $140,000 on more consultation. I don’t know what really is going to come out of it, because I’m sure we’ve spent millions of dollars on consultation and other...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just having a little hard time in trying to understand here. If I can ask the Minister, won’t lighter equipment be a lot cheaper than heavier equipment, especially where ice road maintenance is concerned? Wouldn’t renting a quad with a plough on the front as opposed to a grader be a lot cheaper if it requires that? Also, in the shortened ice road maintenance season, wasn’t there any savings realized from that at all that could be applied to this over-expenditure? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. With the committee’s indulgence, I wonder if I can ask a question on Transportation. With the $230,000 with respect to ice road maintenance, from what I recall, the ice roads didn’t last half as long as they were supposed to last last year. I am wondering why the over-expenditure of $230,000.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, $450,000 for the review is pretty expensive. That’s a lot of public money. I just want to ask the Minister, the membership on these review teams, are they going to be independent members that ensure that there’s some objectivity and non-biasness, or are they just going to consist of FMBS employees and department employees of FMBS, because if they do, then what’s the use of even having these review teams in place, Mr. Speaker? Is the Minister going to create an independent arm's length body to do the reviews for the government? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I was talking earlier in my Member’s statement about the lack of improvement, I guess, in the government’s Employment Equity Program and new human resources amalgamation that a few Members have brought up in the past to the Minister of FMBS. I guess my first question to the Minister with the human resources service level agreement that rolled out in 2004 on the performance recording process, if the level targets and their achievements have been documented in annual reports to date and if the human resource performances have been monitored to date. Is there any reports on...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one more quick question. If you are going to run a sprinkler system through the library and the cultural centre and the Open Door Society offices, you don’t have to if you didn’t want to keep them open. So why incur that extra cost if the government isn’t going to recoup it somehow through their community capacity building initiatives or all this Northern Strategy money the government is throwing around, the gas tax money? Why don’t we get a contribution from the community on that portion of the building that we are paying for to keep them open? Why haven’t we...

Yes, I guess it’s quite obvious that the other community societies that are occupying that building comprise more than 50 percent of the whole building itself, just thinking about the building itself. Is the government going to be looking at ways to recoup any of this $3.5 million, or is roughly $2 million of that $3.5 million going as a grant-in-kind to all these societies, the historical society, the Multimedia Centre and the library? How much of that money is going as a grant-in-kind?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I haven’t been a resident of Fort Simpson for quite a number of years myself. I know basically the Deh Cho Hall inside out. I know it’s an old building. Half of it is storage space. I don’t think the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, the education council, Justice and community wellness are all departments that take up…Some of the offices in there are 20 by 40 feet offices in that building. That’s way overkill. I think that the government could use something that is probably half the size and just as functional for the same cost. Just a question to...