Alfred Moses

I’m glad to hear that the Minister wants to take a look into this. In this sense we get the young families who want to start out a family yet there’s no investment for them. I know some of them say they’ll take a two-bedroom house and even though they say they’ll accept it, under the policy they’re still not able to take it, even though they’re willing to say they’ll make do with what they have, just to get out of paying market rent and money just going into the rental area.

On the same side, we do get some singles where there are two-bedrooms available, but with some singles they say that they...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before I begin I will just apologize and just reiterate anything I said yesterday just to kind of speed up the process.

Looking at the opening remarks, I just wanted to make a comment on the expenditures that were put forth for the budget here in the amount of $43.9 million. I do recall in previous discussion we talked about the lack of arrears. When arrears are not being collected, it does affect the maintenance program because that money actually goes directly into maintaining the units. When we do these expenditures and if we’re looking at putting some new units in the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just one quick question in terms of community justice. I still see it’s relatively the same, but there is, I think, about a $170,000 decrease into the community justice from last year, under community justice, the line items. Anyhow, seeing the importance of community justice programs in our communities and the diversion programs, on-the-land programs that they do and the intervention work that they do, is the Minister willing to take a look and add those dollars again, possibly next business plan? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to make one quick comment before I get into my question, that we’re very fortunate in Inuvik that we do have a pretty good police force and they are actually proactive doing a lot of patrols and they do our road checks and they’re very proactive. It’s really great.

The Minister mentioned the RCMP Complaints Commission. Does he have stats on how many complaints they receive for a year? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, in my previous work when I commend the department on their sport, recreation and youth, they are doing a good job in there. The initiatives that I have seen over the last couple of years working there, and the more money that is being put towards it, is truly an investment into our future generations and into our communities, healthier and safer communities. I do see the results time and time again in the communities and by e-mails and correspondence with the youth that I used to work with.

One concern that I do have, though, is in… There are community...

With that said, the department kind of has an inventory of which communities need the most maintenance for the stock that they do have. There is an inventory out there. Based on the inventory, do they also have a needs assessment in terms of, I guess you could say, public housing applications or home ownership applications? Where they’re seeing the most applications, are they putting the funds towards those regions or communities?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to my general comments on the home ownership program, sometimes we find, well, in my constituency we’ve had some issues where we’ve had a single person trying to get into a unit but there were no units available for them. There’s always just a two-person household or multiple and vice versa. Sometimes we’ll have families but only have a two-bedroom available. They’re told to come back and wait until there’s an open unit for them. Meanwhile they get approved for the home ownership program. I just wanted to ask the Minister if he’s got any action or any ways to...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Today is a very important day for the Inuvialuit people of Inuvik and the Beaufort-Delta region.

During the Aboriginal rights movement which originated in the 1950s, the Government of Canada had signed treaties with many Aboriginal groups, but the Inuvialuit had never entered into such an agreement. The Inuvialuit realized that if a claim was not made, they might not get a voice in deciding their future.

In 1974 they established an organization called the Committee for Original People’s Entitlement, COPE, to resolve the matter. Acting as a collective role for the...

With the announcement of the Minister’s address, I’ve been getting a lot of phone calls from my constituents back in Inuvik in regard to how to use this $100,000, and as the other $100,000 that’s been allocated to do a strategic plan, as the planning process continues to move forward and all the leaders are at the table discussing how we can best deal with this situation, while discussions are going on there are a lot of worried people in the community of Inuvik with the residents and constituents. I do know that there is a meeting going on tomorrow and I hope we get some really positive...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was going to make a quick general comment about the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline office and with the downturn and, I don’t want to say lack of activity, but how other groups are addressing it and reacting to it and yet we’re still continuing to put money into the office. I just want to make a general comment. I know we did a comment back to Mr. Bromley earlier.

I have a question in terms of the line item of industrial initiatives there. There is a decrease and the mandate of the industrial initiatives outlined in the activity description do a lot of work in terms of the...