Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Part of this allocation refers to some disaster assistance for the charter community of K’ahsho Gotine resulting from some flooding last spring during the break-up. There is $1.006 million booked for this. Mr. Chairman, part of the detail here says that up to 85 percent of these costs will be recovered through the federal government’s disaster financial assistance arrangement and I wanted to see what kind of certainty there is to recovering up to 85 percent of this. That would be about $850,000, a fair amount of money. Can the Minister provide some comment to the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Briefly, I think. This is very positive legislation. I’m going to be voting in favour of it. It continues to take a product and I guess something that’s been accepted in virtually every society and civilization in the world and we’re trying to change people’s attitudes about it after many, many generations of normality, in fact even desirability. We’re now saying that we’ve got to change our attitudes and we’re showing some signs of success. So these changes in societal behaviour are big projects that do not show immediate return, but from what I understand, the trends...

Okay. So what other agencies, Mr. Chairman, would be included in this category one, which I understand these are organizations which would automatically get a comparable increment to our public service. Are there any other agencies or organizations of this nature, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Chairman, okay, so we have some explanation of the numbers here is the cause. What’s going on in communities, in families, in societies, or is it in the way we are enforcing or intervening? Do we have new laws or something that’s causing this surge? That’s what I’d like to get a little bit of understanding of, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to table correspondence from the executive director of the YWCA to the Honourable Michael Miltenberger dated December 27th of last year, and previous correspondence concerning the issue of pay and benefits for non-government organizations delivering government programs, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Chairman, under community health programs just shy of a half million dollars is identified for contributions to additional costs associated with the increased number of children receiving services under the Child and Family Services Act and to providing services for children in southern facilities due to an increase in the number of placements. This is quite a…It’s a lot of money on its own and I’m wondering if the Minister could give us some idea in terms of percentage or ratio this, as I say, almost half a million dollars, how much of an increment is this in what was forecasted for this...

Mr. Speaker, I believe we do have a way of building something like this into our ongoing budget. It is called forced growth. We do it all the time. We are going to be dealing with it later on today, I believe, when we consider the supplementary appropriation bill. This is something that I would be very much in support of considering if the Minister’s department or, in fact, others that deal with NGOs, feel that it could be warranted, to offer our partner NGOs an increment for salary and wages. Would the Minister consider using forced growth as a way of providing these NGOs with some wage...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Okay, I think I have a handle. So it was the sort of the price of volatility. I like what I just heard, Mr. Chairman, in that departments have been extended, if you will, half of the forecasted increment, but some obligation has been put on them to find ways to avoid or replace the other half. I like that. That’s putting some responsibility on managers toward our energy agenda.

Mr. Chairman, when it comes to dealing with the fuel and the volatility of it, we just went through a bill earlier in this session directed toward the petroleum products division, which...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. In the last two days, Mr. Speaker, the issue of parity or at least some degree of fairness in wages and benefits for NGOs that deliver programs on behalf of our government has been a bit of a topic here. It’s interesting to note some evolution in that issue, Mr. Chairman. I would quote from Hansard of February 23rd from a comment that the Honourable Michael Miltenberger, Minister of Health and Social Services, said in regard to a question about wage parity. The Hansard record says of the Minister, “I don’t recollect when the time was that there was automatic increases...

Mr. Chair, I think this is the first time in this bill that the information comes up about the rise in fuel prices and the impact it is having on our current year’s budget. People will remember, with some horror and trepidation, Mr. Chair, the way fuel prices skyrocketed last summer and fall. We are now seeing the impact of it on our operations. I believe this whole supp here, the cumulative impact on various departments is $4.3 million in unforeseen fuel costs. In this particular page, $281,000 attributed to or connected with Public Works and Services’ issues.

Mr. Chair, I have several...