Robert Villeneuve

I move that we report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a question on the $19,000 return on maintenance costs for infrastructure assets. How many assets are we talking about with the maintenance cost for two communities of $19,000?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess the onus again would have to go back to the community members to file some kind of proposal, but I do believe that they have made numerous requests to the department to get the extra dollars that they are required, according to the government standards, building codes, et cetera. There are certain dollars that have to be allocated to make this a reality and, of course, they fell short, and they’ve gone out to industry and the industry came back with a few dollars, but really still fell quite short in meeting the final objective of $140,000, which basically is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move that we extend the question period. I seek unanimous consent to extend question period, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to make a motion that I move that we extend the question period. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today my question is to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. I just wanted to ask the Minister about another initiative that the local youth in Fort Resolution have taken upon themselves to try and get resolved. I am talking about the youth centre that has been sitting on the blocks and has been boarded up for the last year-and-a-half. The community is still struggling with dollars to open up the youth centre. They were given $80,000 about a year ago by the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs to buy a building, move it, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I use my Member’s statement to talk about some of the problems our youth are being subjected to today, specifically on education. I am not talking about the costs families are faced with in relocating their children to the larger centres to receive a better education, but the negative societal impact we will be encountering in the future from the disruption of family stability as a consequence of geographical relocation in pursuit of the economic independence and benefits received when living in the larger commercial areas.

Mr. Speaker, the youth...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Minister for that response. I just wanted to ask the Minister what his feelings were toward…I know in the paper he stated that all these outstanding property taxes of residents of all the communities that haven’t been physically assessed to date are still outstanding and that the FMBS can’t even consider writing off these debts which don’t even come close to the amount of debts that this government has written off for corporations to date. When we’re talking a $100,000 write-off in taxation debts for a certain group of people, there is a larger group of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just looking at the debts written off and the total of the bill of $576,000, it’s good to know that the debt will still be an outstanding amount in the government’s books, but there will be no interest accumulating and the government will still look for ways to collect the money.

I just wanted to comment on the Minister’s initiative at looking at providing names of directors of organizations who default on loans. I want to remind the Minister that I will support that initiative and I think it’s something we should do because the organizations all want to remain...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would be glad to meet with the Minister sometime to talk about some new policy initiatives that I would have in mind on how we could better support individuals' needs, as opposed to just offering people what the government has to offer. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.