Wendy Bisaro

I wanted to ask a question with regard to this community government funding. The budget indicates funds are allocated in accordance with the extraordinary funding policy. What projects, what is this particular extraordinary funding policy say is applicable under this contribution? Thank you.

Sorry; maybe it’s the late hour, but I’m a little obtuse. What forced growth? I mean, is there a percentage for that or is it based on forced growth with the GNWT? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few comments in regard to the MACA budget in general and the Minister’s opening remarks. I want to echo Mr. Bromley’s comment right off the top about the increase, the 6 percent increase in budget from last year’s main estimates. I say this quite often, our budgets constantly go up, we never seem to get any new revenue and we, at some point, are going to find ourselves very deep in a hole. I expect that a lot of this increase is probably the result or maybe some of it may be the result of the negotiated contracts that were finalized over these last few months...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll try the question that I put quite some time ago. The review of the operations and maintenance funding model for community governments, I gather that that has been done. I wondered if I could get some indication of what that review found and what implications it had for this budget. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear the Minister talk about getting some information and some involvement from school boards and so on. I think they would be extremely interested in providing some input to the department on this particular issue. I think also that exploring this issue is going to have an impact on businesses who operate daycare centres. I wonder if the Minister can talk about if there is any consideration at this point on how businesses which operate as daycare centres or early child care centres, how they are going to be considered if they are brought in under the GNWT. Thank you.

I will take the Minister at his word. I have another question with regard to the youth contributions that are on this page. There are three items: youth contributions, youth centres, youth corps. There are another two or three items that are also about three or four pages further on in another section. I mentioned in my comments, I’m a little concerned that we’ve got pots of money for youth in various and sundry places and I’m a little concerned that we have situations where the right hand may not know what the left hand is doing. So I’d like to get a little comment from the Minister as to why...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to address my questions to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I was struck by a comment that the Minister made last week from Thursday, actually, when he was responding to a question from Mr. Beaulieu. I quote from unedited Hansard, a portion where Minister Lafferty stated, “Mr. Speaker, just for the Member’s awareness that we are looking at moving early childhood education into schools since enrolment is down in the Northwest Territories.”

I would like to ask the Minister if he could expand on that statement a little bit. It is not an idea...

Yes, no problem.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Minister for his response. I mentioned in my statement that I think that it is necessary at this point and I have to give credit to my colleague Mr. Bromley, because he was the one that first raised this in committee a while ago, but we need to have an audit to know how we got to this current situation that we are in, to determine what actual costs are, whether it is actually going to be $181 million or if all the hidden costs add up to several more million. I would like to ask the Minister if he will commit in this House to an audit of the project from its inception...

I know it is a new organization and in my mind that’s an opportune time to do a review or evaluation. I guess I would suggest that the Minister contact SRC and ask whether or not they are considering looking at themselves or if they want an outside evaluator. I think it would be a good time for them to look at how things are working for themselves.

I have one other question with regard to games and funding for games. This goes back to a number of months ago when there was a request from NWT seniors for some funding for multisport games. As we go forward into future fiscal years, is there any...