Wendy Bisaro

I’m sorry. I didn’t hear the answer. Could the Minister repeat it, please?

Sorry, Mr. Chair, I couldn’t get back to page 9 quick enough. Could we revert to page 9?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. Yes, I figured that you really weren’t going to give me an answer right now, but I appreciate that you will come back to me at some point in time and advise when I might be able to expect this kind of a program.

I imagine the Minister doesn’t have this information with him, but I’ll ask the question anyway and he can hopefully get back to me. Do we have any idea of what the average cost is to the government when somebody dies intestate? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that and I appreciate his commitment to get the information. I do appreciate the fact that the government has a community outreach lawyer, but when a community outreach lawyer goes to a community, they aren’t just dealing with wills and estates. They are dealing with any legal service that a resident in a community needs and I think we need to specifically target will and estate planning. In the end, we will be saving money because the office of the public trustee will not be dealing with people who die intestate.

I’d like to know from the Minister if he would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to discuss the need for access to will and estate planning for our residents. We do have one GNWT lawyer, a community outreach lawyer, whose job it is to visit communities and provide legal services to our residents. But one lawyer can hardly even begin to make a dent in our residents’ needs around will and estate planning. There’s a huge need to educate people about the need to have a will and another huge need to give residents access to lawyers to draft their wills and help them do estate planning.

Employees of the GNWT have access to assistance with...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we could proceed with Industry, Tourism and Investment, the Minister’s comments and any opening comments from Members, if there are any. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for the clarification. I take from that that, yes, this is going to be ongoing. I still didn’t really hear when this commitment is going to start, but I think it’s going to start when the 16 to 1 is exceeded.

The Minister, in his statement, referred to pupil-teacher ratio for authorities, and in authorities that have a number of schools, pupil-teacher ratio can vary from school to school, so I’d like to ask the Minister, when they were deciding on this commitment to fund people beyond 16 to 1 ratio, did they consider evaluating pupil-teacher ratio by school? Did they...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I kind of shot the wad previously before I introduced the motion. I would just like to state, in terms of where the money can come from, I know the department is consistently strapped for money and I know the Minister said, as well, that we don’t know what the federal money is going to be eligible for, but I suspect we can make oral health care fit into something that the federal government is going to require us to use for this $7 million a year.

I really feel this is a minimal amount of money and I feel it’s basic to the health of our children. It’s a very basic...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I listened with interest to his statement yesterday about the impact of funding reallocation for junior kindergarten on the pupil-teacher ratio. I’d like to follow up with a few questions to the Minister.

There is some good stuff in here. There’s some bad stuff in the statement, but the statement suggests to me that it’s okay to financially penalize bigger schools to protect the funding of schools with less than 120 students. I understand that, but I also want to say that I don’t necessarily...