Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure that you can say that the budget is big enough if it’s been planned already without that space there. The community has been involved intimately in the plans for the school. The space has been set aside for it, but there is a requirement for the community to get involved. It’s worth pointing out that the community itself has a number of options right now. The municipality will have access to gas tax funds, MRIF funds, and improved capital funding that my colleague, the Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, spoke about just last week...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d be happy to work with Members to identify ways in which we can improve our support. As I said earlier, I have already got the plans for an improved subsidy. I would dearly love to be able to offer improved capital grants to operators, but that’s going to take more money that this government doesn’t have. We need to find ways to improve our income as a government in order to be able to get those subsidies to people in the North. I’m quite prepared to work with Members and to see if we can find ways to achieve betterment. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d certainly enjoy an opportunity to look at changing our subsidy program so that parents could see more support through this government as well. However, we need to identify more revenues. As Members around this table know, we are challenged to meet our current obligations and are running into what the Minister of Finance has called a debt wall not too far off in the future if we don’t get more money from Ottawa. So it is certainly something we have plans for, but to be able to deliver that kind of program, we need to have more revenues. This government needs to have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, the definitions now, the P1, P2, and P3 would disappear, but the employment equity program would involve the identification and removal of systemic barriers as well as the identification of groups that might be underrepresented and then specific targeted actions to work to bring the representation in various parts of government up to the standards that it should be. So it is in many ways similar. Employment equity is similar to affirmative action, but it is a more active process of identifying where the problems lie and then trying to find ways, whether it is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As is the tradition with how we do business in this House, we have offered to brief the committee. We have shared the information with the committee. We are prepared to have a discussion with members of the standing committee. That would be the first step before any document would be shared outside. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t make a commitment on next year’s budget until we have that budget in the House. I hope that we are going to be able to implement the program next year. We will do all that we can to ensure that we can see it happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We think it would be ideal if all of the people who were teaching language and culture in the schools had the ALCIP instructor course. That is not a requirement. We understand and recognize that elders in our communities are very able to transmit the knowledge of language and culture to students, so we believe that it is possible for schools to provide this training now. But I agree with the Member, that it would be ideal if we could expand the programming. That is the goal. I talked to the college. We are looking to identify funds and would hope to be able to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Good afternoon. Mr. Speaker, this week, October 29th to November 4th, is Canada Career Week. The theme of Canada Career Week this year is: "Find the Work You Love…Build the Life You Want." The career each of us chooses determines how we spend much of our lives. That is one reason it is important to develop a career that is rewarding and fulfilling. A rewarding career takes careful planning. The Department of Education, Culture and Employment has a role to play in helping NWT residents to realize their career goals.

In the NWT, we celebrate Career Week with a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it would take more money in the capital plan. That’s what it would take. It’s fairly simple. So if we win the argument with the federal government, if we are successful at pressing home that we need resource revenue sharing, that we need a reasonable deal with Ottawa, then we have a chance to do that. But this is an issue that’s important not just to Inuvik. We have other communities that within the next couple of years, are going to lose the space that their childcare centres are in and they don’t have new schools planned. So this is a pressing issue...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that it makes tremendous good sense to have childcare centres in schools. It’s something that I think in the long run we need to try and move towards. That said, I think Members around this table know that we are hard pressed even to live up to the requirements in our current capital plan. We have schools that have to be replaced because their foundations are in trouble. We have other capital programs that we can’t deliver on. It’s not a question of talking to the Minister responsible for Public Works. We need to find -- and it comes back to what I was saying...