Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be speaking in favour of this and in these adjustments. As I see it, we are now opening up the appeal process to show transparency by making reports available to the appellant. I think those are good things for the people who do appeal to the process, whereas a decision in the old days up until, of course, the date that this gets changed, is either a yea or nay. It is upheld, and folks will sort of feel left out of the system and try to understand why their appeal wasn’t upheld. I appreciate and I also applaud the efforts to include that transparency.

The other...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the Minister left out one specific area. As I understand it, funding is linked to attendance in roster enrollment, but that is only checked, I believe, once a year. In a certain period, that sets the funding rate for the whole education period. That being said, what is the Minister willing to do to address the truancy issue through legislation that empowers either Health and Social Services to go in and check on what is happening with these children or allow the education system and the DEAs, as he has pointed out, to go in and knock on those doors to make...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have spoken to some educators out there and they have said that when they recognize truancy and they phone these parents and there is no answer, there is nowhere for them to truly go. Why has the Department of Education, Culture and Employment never stepped in to own up to their responsibility to deal with truancy? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, I would like to focus on a serious issue that seems to be rising in our schools. It is truancy. Mr. Speaker, it takes a whole community to raise children. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to participate. Schools can only do so much. Some parents seem to leave it up to the child or teenager to take their education in their own hands. Tardiness and lack of attendance affect our children and their ability to stay focussed at school and eventually some students drop out unless there is some form of intervention.

I have spoken with staff at various schools, and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Menicoche beat me to the chase in regard to the parking, but he also brought up another issue that I know I have concern with, although I wasn’t on planning on discussing it today, which is the doors. I will speak specifically to the parking and I do have concerns with the issue that this building represents itself as an open opportunity for people to come forward and have celebrations of life: weddings, special ceremonies, et cetera. It truly is one of the buildings for the people, and yet we have people park here, even park illegally, while events happen.

The...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. During the review of the 2005-5006 Draft Main Estimates, the committee had an opportunity to speak with the Premier about the federal initiative to establish an expert panel to look into issues related to equalization payments to provinces, and the proposed sub-panel that will consider the financing formulas that govern the flow of federal money to the territories. The committee was pleased to hear of this initiative and is hopeful this process will lead to an improved financing formula that addresses many of the shortcomings of previous financial arrangements with...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In other words, I guess we're providing some type of subsidy benefit, and I think it's at least important that we put it on the record. I'm just trying to understand what are we qualifying. How are we going to qualify this number and how are we going to identify it? At this stage, without knowing more information, I can't say I have a concern or I don't have a concern. Yet, it's kind of interesting to find out what type of subsidy are we subsiding this to. At least we need to identify it and not be afraid of the number.

The other thing is how do we set rates in...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a motion for page 7-19. I move that this committee recommends that the government undertake to develop a concrete plan with specific actions to address the absence of policing services in small communities in the NWT;

Further, that the plan and its associated cost estimate be presented to the Standing Committee on Social Programs before or during the review of the 2006-2009 Business Plans. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Out of those 11, how many days of the year do they have some type of presence? Do we have someone there travelling back and forth to establish some type of fiscal presence, be it for one day? We can pick one community. I'll let the Minister pick a community. How often do we have a physical presence from the RCMP in those communities? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your answer there, Mr. Minister. In regard to the six speculative positions at this time that sort of go back to the report, I can't say they're six firm positions at this time because we're sort of looking into the future, so I hope we don't argue over the number as opposed to the point, which is would this Minister consider options of maybe working with this side of the House in us maybe supporting a supplementary appropriation to help support that injection of those six members? When we have communities that don't have policing, our job here is to...