Robert Villeneuve

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I would like to thank my colleagues for extending question period.

Mr. Speaker, just getting back to some of the issues that the local youth and the residents have been working on in reference to the arena facility. Over the last year, the youth and the community council have been requesting extra dollars to help make improvements in the arena facility, which the youth again have taken it on themselves to make these improvements. They have allotted many hours and evenings to doing construction work themselves in the arena, Mr. Speaker.

When I went back there and...

I seek unanimous consent to extend question period.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Maybe I will just edify the Minister on what the problem is. The problem is that there is no money.

---Laughter

Basically, the money that was allotted to the community for this youth centre is not sufficient. Basically, their shortfall is to the tune of about $40,000, Mr. Speaker. With the government painting a bright fiscal picture with all of the new developments at the national level, I don’t see what the big issue is with scraping up $40,000 within Municipal and Community Affairs multi-million dollar budget to help the youth in the community. Thank you, Mr...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I am proud to rise and announce that on September 25, 2004, I attended a graduation ceremony held in Deninu Kue, to recognize the significant achievements of three students. Mr. Speaker, I would like to again congratulate Donavan Boucher, Andy Norn and Travis Guild in reaching this significant milestone, and encourage them all to proudly display their Grade 12 diplomas.

I would like to point out, Mr. Speaker, that this graduation class represents a 200 percent increase in the number of grads from the previous Deninu School. So I would also like to...

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. 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. Speaker. I'm glad to hear that the Minister is looking forward to making some changes in the program. I just wanted to ask the Minister about some of the client information that trickles down to the grassroots level from the policies that are in the Income Support program. A lot of the income support officers in the communities don't have the information available to them to present to clients to make a lot of productive choices. They don't have information on human resource capacity building programs with the federal government; therefore, they can't pass them on to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to follow up on some of the issues that honourable Member Bill Braden has been raising with the Income Support program. I believe the Minister was talking about the program itself. I think that the program, the low income and the Income Support program today has to start focusing on what people need instead of what the government currently has to offer.

Just to follow up on the point I was making in yesterday's session, Mr. Speaker, about the option where the households all get to lose their eligibility for income support, when one member of the household...

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...