Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Forty years ago to the day yesterday, March 3rd, Justice Thomas Berger sat down in a community and listened to his first presentation on the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, which would become better known as the Berger Inquiry.

Last night I had the opportunity and the honour to attend the packed house at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre and listen to a presentation by Mr. Berger himself. All I can say is, it was amazing.

The Berger Inquiry was way before my time, and the stories that he shared, the information that he mentioned was something that was...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I feel very honoured to be speaking to Bill 46, Deline Final Self-Government Agreement Act. First of all, I would just like to congratulate the people from the community of Deline for their hard work and moving forward on this bill. As the Premier and my colleague Mr. Yakeleya have said, it is a historic event and actually a very historical bill in being that it’s the first stand-alone community-based self-government in the history of the Northwest Territories. I believe it will set a standard for other communities in the Northwest Territories to look at the work that...

The good thing about when you talk with people in the public is they have a lot of information, and this was just brought to my attention and I think it’s something that this government really needs to look at in terms of legislating, that we have to go out and educate people and it’s got to be part of our mandate. So, I’m glad the Minister is going to be looking at it. I know we have a lot of legislation to get done from now until the end of this Assembly as well.

Continuing on prevention and promotion, can the Minister provide me with details on how many regional health promotion offices we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I had the opportunity to go and meet with some of the participants at the Weaving our Wisdom territorial wellness gathering over at the Explorer Hotel. I had some really good discussions with past colleagues as well as with some people here who are doing some good work. One of the areas that we talked about was prevention and promotion, in terms of putting funding into our dollars.

So I’d like to ask the Minister, is there anything that currently mandates this government, or is there any legislation that we have that says that this government needs to put...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table a document from the Canadian Education Association, entitled “2014-2015 Winners of the Ken Spencer Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.” The document, as I mentioned, highlights East Three Secondary gardening program.

This program has helped students engage. It’s helped with attendance. It’s given them nutrition so that they can excel in school work. They’ve got a really great program that I don’t think has to be reinvented, and it’s something that’s unique and brought forth from the local people and is something that can be forwarded to the schools.

I’d like to ask the Minister if he’d be willing to work with the staff who developed this program and take it out to the regions and to the schools so they can develop their own programs and have the success that Inuvik has shown and has been recognized...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll follow up with questions to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment on my Member’s statement.

I’d like to ask the Minister if he in fact is familiar with the Canadian Education Association and the Ken Spencer Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning and if any of those programs that this organization has awarded, if he’s looking at ways to better our education system through these programs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’d like to acknowledge the departments of ECE and ITI for their contributions and beginning to build strong support for school food initiatives and also recognizing the important role that health and nutrition have played in learning and development.

Some future projects that East Three School gardening program plan do to include a traditional food snack program as well as an ethnobotanical garden with medicine and food plants. They’re also looking at doing a cultural lunch program featuring northern games as well as knowledge sharing and looking at creating prototypes for indoor aquaponic and...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate being able to comment on our last opportunity with this department within the life of this government. You do learn a lot over the three years, whether it’s through the business planning or the main estimates budget discussions that we’re currently having. We’ve also had a lot of correspondence with this department here and you do learn a lot, especially if you chair the committee that’s the oversight for this department, in terms of what was said, reports that were done, documents that might have been tabled or even just more consulting and going out to try...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can I ask the Minister whether or not he would review the funding policy in terms of this healthy nutrition program so that students in regions that have a higher population will get more funding so that they can feed a higher percentage of the population in the school? Will he review that based on population size?