Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this point we are just in the process of beginning to start to get the statistics on the activities of the community justice committees. We have only recently been able to provide all communities with that $20,000 in extra funding for them to hire a part-time coordinator. Many of them didn’t have the resources before or even the ability to collect the statistics of what they were doing themselves. That was one of the reasons for looking at this as a needed investment.

Now the committees have someone or should have someone available who can start to collect some...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member raised this issue with me some time ago and in taking a look at the Condominium Act, I had to agree that it looked like there might be some area that we were not looking at. So I’ve asked the department to compare our Condominium Act with those acts across Canada. I think the area that we might be somewhat lacking in is whether or not the reserve fund is considered to be adequate. That’s the area that I think they’re going to have to examine; whether or not we should insist, like Alberta does, that there be an independent review by an auditor as to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. With me today I have the deputy minister, Mr. Don Cooper; and, the director of finance, Ms. Kim Schofield.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have to follow the guidelines set out by the federal government for the program. I can tell Members we are nowhere near satisfying the demand. I believe this year we had a waiting list of people who did not get any funding through the program because there was not enough money in the program to address all of the requests. The other problem with the program is it will not provide funding to Metis people. That’s something I have consistently written to the federal Minister and demanded that they reconsider their approach to this program, but I have not been...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes. When we heard that the CRA was planning to tax student grants to aboriginal people, the Minister of Finance and I jointly signed a letter pointing out that this would be counterproductive and encouraged them to reconsider their decision.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can certainly provide the Member with a listing of recent visits to communities. I will endeavour to ask the RCMP for the numbers of times that they have been into the schools for conversation. I expect that every time they are in a school that is one of the issues that they address. I think it is important to remember, as I said, that we have other initiatives. We have the Esteem Team that goes around to talk to kids about the issues like this and making healthy choices. This government isn’t taking just one approach; we are taking a number of approaches. But...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The formal program DARE isn’t offered in the smallest communities. The resources aren’t there to do it, but, when the RCMP visits schools, and they often visit schools on community visits, they take the opportunity to talk to young people about making the right choices. That is certainly something that comes up. It is not a formal program, but it is something that is discussed. The other thing is that the school curriculum itself includes dealing with making the right choices starting as early as kindergarten. Kindergarten and Grade 1 is entirely focused on just...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The $15,000 was in the budget for planning money for the renovations to the school. With the situation that’s happened this winter, we are likely going to have to find out for sure what’s happening with the piles before we determine at what rate we move forward with the renovation or replacement. So that $15,000 now will probably be used to study the situation more. If it proves that we need to spend some money for short-term repairs, then we will have to find the money to do that. At this point, that money was in the budget before the issue with the crack at the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For the Member’s last question, I would have to check with my colleague, the Minister of Public Works, to find out if the thermostat has been fixed yet.

---Laughter

I haven’t got that information with me. In terms of the schedule, the planning is proceeding, as I understand it. The whole process of locating the site for the school has proceeded over the course of the winter and the community has been involved in approving that site so that now we can start to prepare. The expectation is that construction will start to take place within the next fiscal year and the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I should probably go back to Mr. Menicoche because I haven’t been offered the occasion to respond for a number of Members. I can’t disagree with Mr. Menicoche that the RCMP in his region have a big area to cover with the six communities, and I certainly heard the Members yesterday talking about the need for more police services in communities that don’t have any services right now. As the information that I have with me here indicates, there are eight RCMP positions in Fort Simpson and four in Fort Liard. I don’t know if any of them are vacant at the moment, but that’s...