Tom Beaulieu

Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I recognized the two pages that are here from my riding, but I got one of the schools wrong, so I'm going to do it again. I would like to recognize Bryanna Cheesma from the Kaw Tay Whee School in Detah and Joseph Charlo-Lafferty from the St. Patrick School here in Yellowknife. Also I'd like to recognize some other members from Detah that are here, our interpreter Mary Rose Sundberg of course has become a regular interpreter in the House thanks to you, Mr. Speaker. Also I'd like to recognize Mr. Ernie Abel, Ernie is a father of our hard working...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the deputy minister mentioned that there was some sort of infrastructure deficit in the whole system of all of the community infrastructure that exists. So what I'm curious about is, if a community does not have, say, paved streets. We'll use that as an example. If a community doesn't have paved streets, would that be considered an infrastructure deficit?

Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to talk about the GNWT Human Resources. For many years, this government has tried to employ a public service that's representative of the population it serves. However, Mr. Speaker, I think the approach is wrong. I think the reason we have no reasonable success is that we cannot achieve our objectives by looking at the entire NWT as a whole. We must start looking at representation by population on a community-by-community basis.

Firstly, the goal of the Affirmative Action Policy is 51 per cent priority one employees in the GNWT. Yet, in...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So the federal government has a program called the Small Community Fund which has a minimum of 100,000 people, or a maximum of 100,000 people. That fund is then taken and distributed to all the communities, including the very smallest of our communities, then from there the communities are asked to do project-specific items that are then funded by this Small Communities Fund program? Is that what I'm to understand from what the Minister is saying?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Along the same lines, in the 20-year assessment there is a capital item, the community learning centre. There's a 2018-2019 in the 20-year assessment within the next five-year capital plan time. In Ndilo there is a community learning centre scheduled in the 20-year assessment for 2018-2019. I was wondering if the Minister could give me a schedule update on the community learning centre for Ndilo.

I have nothing further. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to talk about what's not here today on the Capital Plan listed on page 11, and that is the Capital Plan to construct a gymnasium and a couple of classes for the K’alemi Dene School in Ndilo. Mr. Chairman, my understanding is that the numbers at which the school becomes eligible for its own gymnasium is 125 students. I see that there's been some departure from that in the past, but I didn't know what the full capacity of some of these schools were at the time the gymnasiums were built.

The bottom line is that K’alemi Dene there is currently 117...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister work with other Ministers in Cabinet to utilize other government programs. I spoke of other government programs that can, I guess, create employment in the small communities. So can the Minister commit to the House to working with other Ministers in order to look at all the employment possibilities at the small communities? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, some programs that are being delivered sometimes comes with some pre-requisites that individuals would at the end of the training have to have full-time jobs, and in our small communities there's no full-time jobs available for the most part. I'd like to ask the Minister if he could review the Small Communities Employment Support Program to remove any barriers that may prevent the program from being easily accessed.

Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to recognize two pages from Detah: Joseph Charlo-Lafferty and Brianna Nitsiza. Also, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to also recognize Mary Rose Sundberg, also from Detah, that's our interpreter today. Marci cho.