Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe we’re now on 6-38? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I notice that additional funding for grants eligible to community governments assisting with the insurance and mobile equipment operations has decreased. Of course insurance costs decreasing is welcome news. I certainly hope that’s the answer that explains what the dip is in what looks like, I’ll just call it $150,000, maybe close to $200,000 difference there in the negative. So could the Minister provide some information as to what’s changed in that circumstance? Thank you.

I keep saying taxes; I mean the assessment process. My apologies for that. The deputy minister is answering the question correctly, because I’m saying it incorrectly. What is the cost that Municipal and Community Affairs is foregoing when it comes to the assessment of these properties for tax-based municipalities?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Under the taxation portion I have a question for the Minister. Does Municipal and Community Affairs charge back to the communities or in some fashion for managing the taxation of individual communities? In this particular case, obviously, I’m not referring to the City of Yellowknife but other municipalities, especially in tax-based municipalities.

Just to understand this a little further, why wouldn’t it be listed under the School of Community Government, then, if it’s primarily focused under their tenureship through new water treatment plants? If I understood that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. May I remind this House it wasn’t that long ago we were having serious discussions about leaking of information, committee confidence and whatnot. I don’t think the information told today is necessarily a detriment to the project, but it still stands for the principles of frustration that were caused earlier. Information received is still being learned and understood. So perhaps laying it before the House was an ill choice at this time. Is it reasonable? I believe the public should be fully apprised of the information that will come forward, but I certainly hope that...

Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge and appreciate the answer the Minister provided. Mr. Speaker, I know in an ideal world we’d be able to provide hot breakfasts to all our young folks and these types of programs. That’s why I’m trying to take a measured approach and possibly a program that we could provide and afford. Would the Minister ensure that in this nutritional food basket study that they’re planning to do, that this multivitamin concept gets a high priority of consideration? I’m not saying as in subject it to it has to come out as a high priority answer, but I want to make sure it gets...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to rise today to talk about a potential idea of how we can help improve the health of our children and youth in the Northwest Territories. I firmly believe that the empowerment of parents to ensure that a child is fed and taken care of properly is certainly on their shoulders and within their abilities, but I also believe the territorial government has a supporting role to help provide, focus and promote health delivery ideas to help feed children and youth of our Territory.

Mr. Speaker, today I’d like to discuss something I think could help these...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to return to item 8, written questions, on the order papers of today.

---Unanimous consent granted.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the faith that the Minister has that these people will be listening to Hansard, but just to ensure that they do get the message that this is an important issue that can deliver good things for our youth, would the Minister be willing to pen a letter to let this group know, that’s doing this review, that it is a priority of some people in this House and it could provide significant if not, certainly, substantial benefits for the health of our young people, noting the lack of nutritional items I noted in my Member’s statement? Would the Minister be willing to pen a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I raised the issue of the health of our young people and ways that we could improve that. Certainly I’d like to think of it as a way that we could develop a strategy over the next little while and certainly launch an ambitious plan that would be relatively cost effective but deliver great results, and that plan is coming up with a strategy for multivitamins for our youth and it could be implemented in such a way that day homes could access this, daycares and certainly provide it to our school districts so our young kids can have access to...