Alfred Moses

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Today I have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and it’s with regard to the e-learning pilot project that’s happening in the Beaufort-Delta right now. As I mentioned earlier, to make any travel to the communities is very expensive. What the Beaufort-Delta Education Council is doing is very innovative and unique in getting the education courses out to the communities very promptly and very efficiently.

I want to ask the Minister of Education Culture and Employment, what are the department’s plans for the future of this project when it...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll try to keep this short. Obviously the announcement in the Minister’s opening remarks about the $100,000 to find a solution for the Inuvik gas situation is something that I’ll keep on top of and always ask questions to see how things roll out over the next few weeks, after talking with Mr. Miltenberger last week in regard to this. Obviously that is probably the number one priority for me right now.

Probably second to that is the tourism, the $600,000 that was allocated that went on top of the marketing budget for Tourism NWT. They have a really good business plan...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment.

Please provide the exact number of GNWT contracts that have been awarded to southern contractors that were not registered under the Business Incentive Policy for the 2011-2012 and current fiscal years.

Of these contracts awarded to southern contractors, can the Minister provide me with the number of change orders that were done to adjust the contracts?

Can the Minister provide me with the exact total costs of these change orders?

Of these same contracts won, can the Minister provide me with how many of...

Thank you. I appreciate the Minister making that comment of possibly coming back to the House with a supplementary appropriation. Just to offer a little bit more information in terms of whom we’d like to see at this table, seeing as I have some time here and there’s no other questions, we need nurses, we need social workers, we need teachers, probation officers, the RCMP officers, community counsellors.

Would the Minister take the lead, create this team, create a budget and possibly do an outreach program? Would he commit to doing an outreach program or look at a pilot project where there’s an...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. When the department finally addresses some of these concerns, what is the department doing to ensure that students who need these extra resources and that need this help and these services are not provided in the Northwest Territories for the students that need it? In fact, these services aren’t even provided for for adults that need it, and students are very critical. They’re learning and they’re developing, and yet we’re still waiting to find out what they need. But when he does find out, how is he going to assure that they get the services when we don’t even have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just one last quick question and it comes back to the views of our Beaufort-Delta Leadership Council, and that’s intergovernmental work and how we can work together to be more efficient in the service delivery of our programs and our dollars.

Is the Minister willing to work with the Department of Justice, or even the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, to see how we can work in getting our elders into those departments to promote culture, to promote tradition, to promote values and teachings of on-the-land programs, language in the schools? Is he willing to...

Over the years, some of these non-government organizations have been operating out of the same budget and they stretch the dollars as far as they can go. I’m asking the Minister, is he willing to commit, should it come from committee, to allocate some of those dollars to these NGOs so they can provide the programs. Like I said, obviously, when we talk chronic disease management, the department thinks of long-term care facilities. We want prevention and promotion programs, and we have a lot of great organizations out there that are running these programs. Is the Minister willing to commit those...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to take the opportunity to welcome Ms. Charlene Doolittle, who has been a really good friend and also a former participant on the Death Race Team that we did down in Grande Cache. Welcome, and I congratulate you on your new position. I also would like to recognize Sheila Nasogaluak, who I have done work with on the interagency committee in Inuvik. She does a really great job and is a great ambassador for Inuvik. I would also like to recognize Shari Olsen, who I have known over the years through the recreation fields; Ms. Melaw Nakehk’o, who is a preserver...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You heard my colleagues today. This is a very timely motion to be bringing into the House, especially when we’ve got so many other strong business topics we are dealing with going through the budget process. It’s a very stressful time and you feel that you are almost backed into a corner with federal government legislation and the bills that are coming through. As well, some Members here are coming and talking about wanting to bring this motion through without having really strong discussions.

Over the last few weeks that we’ve been here, we’ve literally been running...

Mr. Speaker, there’s a reason why our hospital admissions are at 40 percent and there’s a way we can stop that by investment into prevention and promotion programs now. We talked about investment this whole last two weeks, and the sooner we do it, the sooner we can drop those numbers down. We don’t want it to rise at all.

In our hospitals we also have some elder day programs. I’m looking at all avenues to protect our senior citizens. Would the Minister look at these elders day programs, do an assessment and look at how we can provide more services, whether financially or in a staffing situation...