Wendy Bisaro

That doesn’t give me very much comfort. I know you’re working with staff, you’re doing this, doing that, but what does “encouraging” mean?

Can the Minister give me more detail? When he talks to the AANDC Minister, just what does he do to encourage the Minister to make a decision? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. I guess I would ask the Minister if he could provide me and other Members with a written summary of this practice and convention that we’ve been following for however many years he mentioned.

I have great difficulty in seeing a similarity between what we’re talking about here with iPads, which are branded, presumably, and putting money into, for instance, Arctic Winter Games. I don’t see that these are equated quite the same.

It’s one thing to take funding and to put a logo on a program or put a logo at an event on a sign. It’s another thing, in my mind, to take a piece...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, who is also responsible for the Giant Mine Remediation Project. I would like to follow up on some of the questions that were asked by my colleague Mr. Bromley the other day about the environmental assessment agreement for the Giant project.

In the fall of 2013, there were some excellent hearings held by the Mackenzie Land and Water Board. They produced a very well thought out decision and a whole bunch of recommendations. There was a really good response from the responsible Ministers in...

Thanks to the Minister. I think distrust is too strong a word. I think it’s a concern for the accountability of the money. The Minister mentioned the business planning process, but the business plans, we didn’t have business plans for the ’14-15 budget year. The business plans coming up are for ’15-16, and if I understood the comment earlier, it was that this $10 million is going to be spent in this year, ’14-15. I appreciate and accept the offer from the Minister to get reports on how this money is being spent, but for me and other Members to feel like we are adequately monitoring how this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On March 21st of this year, Premier McLeod announced the recipient of the 2014 Council of the Federation Excellence in Water Stewardship Award for the Northwest Territories as the Wek’eezhii Land and Water Board.

The award recognizes outstanding achievement and innovative practice and leadership in the area of the water stewardship and is presented to organizations, partnerships, businesses, institutions and communities in each province and territory.

In a press release that day, Premier McLeod stated that the Wek’eezhii Land and Water Board recognition “is an excellent...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have some concerns about this money that’s associated with the Devolution Final Agreement as well. I believe we brought this up before, but I think there’s a concern on the part of Members that, you know, the money is there and we are being assured that it’s going to be used for devolution purposes, whether it’s to refit an office or whether it’s to hire a person that we didn’t anticipate that we needed to have hired before. But I think there’s also some nervousness about the fact that this money is sitting in general revenues. We get assurance that it’s only going to...

Mr. Chair, I move that we report progress.

---Carried

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that internal compliance audits and action plans designed to address deficiencies prepared by regional authorities be forwarded to the Standing Committee on Social Programs.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I also have a process question here and I don’t believe we discussed it. It may have come to my mind after we went through the bill at committee, but if an amount in here, for instance, an amount that is to be forgiven, if it is not written off first, if it goes straight to forgiveness of debt and it’s now written off, how then is it accounted for in the public accounts? The comptroller general referenced that write-offs are part of the doubtful accounts in the books, but if it goes straight to forgiveness of debt, how is it accounted for? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have two motions to go and then we’ll move on to Mr. Dolynny.