Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The principle of the motion is one that’s pretty interesting indeed, and with the new dollars that we’re getting, I do support that we have to have a debate. I feel that we are going to have a debate anyway, once we get these revenue resources into the government budget.

However, I don’t feel that I could support the motion at this time in regard to the therefore section allocating specific percentages of dollars into different areas within our government system. When we go through the business plans, we see areas such as deferred maintenance, infrastructure projects...

Mr. Speaker, with the theme of Disabilities Awareness Week creating accessible and welcome communities for all people, we only have a few communities that have accessible infrastructure. What is the Minister and his department doing to actually create accessible and welcoming communities within our 33 communities in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I know there were a lot of recommendations in the report. We’re five years into a government for a document that was tabled in the House in 2008. That’s five years of action and work that could have been done to addressing some of these recommendations. We’re less than half completed, still a lot that are ongoing, and some that haven’t even been addressed.

Can the Minister please go into detail on why some of these haven’t been addressed and why we’re not even getting half of these recommendations complete? Is it lack of resources? Is it lack of funding into these organizations? Because as we...

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to recognize my constituency assistant, Ms. Maia Lepage. I believe I did see her up in the stands earlier. She is also here chaperoning two Pages from Inuvik, Ms. Kyla Hvatum and Ms. Keisha Shaimaiyuk. They said they’ve been having a good time here in the capital as well as paging here in the Legislative Assembly. I’m really glad that they have had that experience and were able to come to Yellowknife and participate in the program. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I cannot stand today to do my Member’s statement. The reason being is I’ve committed to being in a wheelchair for today, and although I did stand when the Mace came in and during the prayer, I did that out of respect for the House and the rules of the House.

The reason I’m in a wheelchair today is because I’ve committed to creating awareness of a different kind: awareness for people with disabilities. This week is Disabilities Awareness Week and the theme is Disability Awareness: Creating an Accessible and Welcoming Community for all People.

As I sit here in a wheelchair...

Mr. Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment establish targets and outcome measures that align with the overall objective for its income security programs; review the data it currently collects on income security programs, to ensure it has the data required to measure whether targets and outcomes are being met; and develop a plan to identify when it will evaluate its programs, to determine if the objective of those income security programs is being met. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment ensure that regional managers and supervisors formally monitor client files. This monitoring should include regularly scheduled reviews of client files as well as the use of standard templates in all regions to help ensure a consistent approach. In cases where monitoring uncovers deficiencies or other issues, regional managers and supervisors should follow up formally. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, it has been a long day. We did read it in the 21 page report earlier. Being new to the government, I do feel that there are a lot of areas that needed to be fixed. We wouldn’t have had to read a 21 page report with 21 recommendations into this House if the Department of Education, Culture and Employment were on top of things. I would have rather read it in a five page report or no report at all that said everything was good. We had a lot of unsatisfactory areas that deal with a lot of people that have come to my office and we actually had people in the gallery who had to express...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You’ve heard my colleagues. They’ve all expressed reasons why we need to invest more dollars. Over our last couple of budgets, we’ve asked for those dollars, we fought for those dollars to be put into these areas. You’ve heard me in the House speaking in favour of the Mental Health Act, how we need to get more dollars for detox beds, treatment centres. This motion speaks to that. Plain and simple, we’ve heard it before over the 20 months.

Just for the record, I want to say I’m in support of this motion. I will support my colleagues moving forward and getting 10 percent...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last year on October 31st, I made a Member’s statement and asked questions of the Minister of Health and Social Services on stem cell donation, dealing with cancer and leukemia and those types of cancers and how it can be prevented, how we can increase our database so we get more people signing up to be donors to save people’s lives. This goes along the same lines of something that I had pushed for last year, so obviously, I will be voting in support of this motion.

It’s a motion that shows action needs to be done to update and modernize the current act that we have...