R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know I’ve brought this up a couple of times, and it’s because people in town bring it up to me; they want their children to get these jobs and stay in the North and be encouraged to come back to the North. It’s something that I’ll be bringing up again and I’ll be looking forward to working with I guess the Ministers of all the departments, since they’re responsible for the hiring, to try and up those numbers in Hay River. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Minister’s been doing a great job of keeping us updated, weekly updates as to how many summer students have been hired, where they’ve been hired. I know that there was an article on CBC the other day that said his department does encourage other departments to hire summer students, and they try to encourage departments to exceed last year’s hiring. I was wondering with these stats and with this encouragement that they give, do they do anything with those statistics? Do they look at areas there there’s deficiencies in places like Hay River where we have a low percentage of hires? Do they...

In addition to attending the opening, the Ministers who attended made a point of touring other facilities in Hay River and I want to thank them for showing interest in that as well. It was great to hear from Mr. Nadli and Chief Fabien. They spoke about their regions and their communities’ ties to Hay River. It was a great reminder that even though we’re spread far and wide in this territory, we’re all neighbours. As Chief Fabien said, “We’re all relatives sharing this land. “It was also great to hear that there has already been three babies born in the new health centre. We’ve entered into a...

Thank you. I will leave that regional issue alone. I guess it’s kind of a territorial issue when you’re talking about tens of millions of dollars. I just wanted to discuss the Human Tissue Donation Act. I think this would be the section. It was passed in the last Assembly. It came into force last June, I believe, and the latest information I found on it says that we have to wait until the organ donation registry is set up before people can register. I was wondering how far along that process is, if that’s going to happen in this budget year. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We will consider the document after a short break. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I now call the Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just thought that was something the public should be informed of so I wanted to get the Minister out of his seat. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Laughter

I respect the separation of the judiciary from the Legislature. Does this increase have any sort of effect on ongoing negotiations or can it be used as precedent? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Does committee agree?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just have a few general comments in reply to the budget address and I’ll save my specifics for when we debate the main estimates. This budget process has been quite a unique experience. We have an unprecedented number of first-term MLAs, elected during a time when commodity prices were falling to ten-year lows, investment in the territory was waning, and no new mining projects were on the horizon. The Department of Finance told us that we need to find $150 million in savings, and because the previous Assembly saw fit to extend its term, we were forced to compress a...