Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As far as I’m aware, there is a program or part of the program that supports people with disabilities and kicks in extra payments for those people who have disabilities under the Income Support Program. In terms of a transition, I’m not sure what we’d be looking for, but I’d be happy to look into the matter and get back to the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It would take an investment of money by this government to increase the numbers of RCMP so they could be in the communities more often, or so that we could provide detachments in more communities.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I can’t make that promise because it’s not up to me to determine what goes into a supplementary appropriation. Even if I were to make the request, it’s up to the FMBS to determine whether or not they support that going in and there’s no way that I could make that commitment.

I think it’s important to remember that we got into this situation because all the Members around this table agreed that we wanted to cut $20 million out of this budget. We all agreed that was what we were going to do. We were going to be fiscally prudent. In the last couple of days...

That is correct, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Schofield tells me that the last time that a report was run, we reported nine vacant positions and because of the need to keep positions for affected employees with layoffs and because the people aren’t available until April 1st or 15th or whenever they are formally laid off, none of the positions will be filled until we know whether or not the affected employees are going to take them.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will continue to pressure the federal government to recognize what they themselves say. They say that aboriginal people include Métis people, and yet they are discriminating in this program by not allowing Métis people to apply. So I will continue to pressure the federal government and work to try and have them recognize that they must change the rules to allow Métis people to also access this money, and that they should put more money in so that all of the status people who are applying to it can be served. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have 11.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If it turns out that more money is needed, I would have to approach the FMBS for support for a supplementary appropriation, which would come before this House. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is certainly right that we spend a lot more on offenders than we do on victims, but we do have some programs that provide services to victims. We have, in the past year, increased the funding for those services by 22 percent -- actually, that was not in the last year, that was two years ago, to $305,000 in 2004-05…I guess that is this current year. We have added money to victims services. It is an area where we support victims to provide victims’ impact statements; we provide other services to help them with counselling and so on when it comes to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to make it clear that what we're proposing is not a monument, it is actually something that is intended to be practical. It will have a number of courtrooms that are extremely small, about the size of our Committee Room A in this building, as well as the bigger ones that are needed. But it's not a question that we'll be building a whole bunch of great big courtrooms here if they're not necessary. What we've looked at is what will be necessary over the next several generations, and then the plans are going to be developed to reflect that. The judiciary...