Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and I want to follow up on my statement. I asked a whole slew of questions in my statement and I’d like to ask some of those to the Minister now about the Early Childhood Program review, which the department has apparently been doing since sometime last fall, since September, October, I’m not exactly sure when it started.

My first question to the Minister would be to get an update on whether or not the work was done. Was the review done? There was a symposium that was supposed to be held. Can I...

Just one last question. The statement was that this would accelerate the delivery of the first two aircraft. Am I correct, we are going to get two aircraft a little sooner than the original schedule laid out? Will that have any impact on the aircraft following the delivery of the two? Is that schedule impacted? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is a large amount here of $1.5 million to provide funding for the purchase of eight Air Tractor Fire Boss air tankers. Could I get an explanation of why this is a supplementary appropriation? I believe we had put it into our budget earlier, the budget that was passed earlier this year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that consideration of Tabled Document 246-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-2015, be now concluded and that Tabled Document 246-17(5) be reported and recommended as ready for further consideration in formal session through the form of an appropriation bill. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that consideration of Tabled Document 247-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2015-2016, be now concluded and that Tabled Document 247-17(5) be reported and recommended as ready for further consideration in formal session through the form of an appropriation bill.

Thanks to the Minister for that. I just have one last question. It’s my understanding that the public sector accounting principle that we are coming into adherence with applies to non-operating sites.

Could I get confirmation on that and could I also get confirmation that our number includes both non-operating and operating sites? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question here with regard to the Inuvik Tuk Highway. It’s almost $5 million and it is a carry-over. I understand that. It’s my recollection we had an extended discussion in the House about advancing money for this project. So I’d like to get an explanation as to why this project is seemingly behind, perhaps, where we are in terms of completion of this project, are we going to be finished on schedule, why it is that we are lapsing $5 million from last year’s construction season. Thank you.

When I use the term “Commissioner’s lands,” I’m thinking it’s the land that we’ve taken over since devolution, but I think those are called Territorial lands. So we think we’ve found all the sites on Territorial lands and Commissioner’s lands, just to confirm for me. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have a question with regards to the $300,000 for a planning study for Taiga Lab. I guess I would like to know, this is a new expense, I think. It looks to me like it’s a new expense. So, why are we not able to put this into our budget which we passed not very long ago? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have some questions. I presume that’s acceptable? Thank you. I don’t have major concerns, but I think I need to ask some questions to ensure anybody who is listening to this and wondering about this great expense, to ensure that they understand what this is all about. The Minister stated in his opening remarks that this is a one-time expenditure, but I would suspect that we would see that it’s entirely possible with new developments happening, and/or the discovery of contaminated sites which we haven’t yet discovered, that we would see another one-time increase.