Glen Abernethy

That’s great. Maybe if the Minister can provide me with some data on how far those records go back, because I know there’s product from three, four, five, seven, eight, nine, 10 years. It would be great to go back and capture some of the stuff we’ve done, so if the Minister can provide me that, that would be great. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The first section here, NWT Arts Council, is $500,000. This is where we give money to groups that are obviously interested in producing some sort of project, whether it is music, whether it is writing or whatnot.

In this area, I know that over the years we have done a really fantastic job of putting some money into the hands of some of our artists throughout the Northwest Territories, but we haven’t always done a brilliant job of sort of collecting or recognizing what has been accomplished by these artists. For instance, we have had many CDs produced by many talented...

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Next on my list is Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you. That sounds really good. I am just slightly confused. Does that mean some of that space is going to be used for exhibits itself? Does that mean we are actually going to have more exhibit space in the museum or does it mean it is where we can bring in our product from the Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, Tlicho and store it there and help us build more exhibits? Is it going to give us more places where people can see stuff or is it still going to be storage but it is going to enhance our existing locations where we are going to be building exhibits?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a couple of quick questions on the culture and heritage section. I understand, from your statement yesterday, that there is an additional $200,000 being put into the budget to help with some museum displays and I think that is great. I think that is fantastic. What I am curious about is, has there been any thought with these displays and with displays that already exist in the museum, whether they are in storage or whether they are out for public consumption, has there been any thought about travelling some of these shows around in southern Canada, maybe...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and once again I appreciate the Minister’s response. I know a lot of good work is done, but we’ve still got this situation where it seems to me that a department could ignore all the good work that the Department of Human Resources is doing in this respect if they choose not to accommodate, they just choose not to accommodate and they don’t hire, but we have a policy that says we’re going to accommodate. So what action are we going to take to make sure the departments actually live up to the policies and procedures that we have? What is the department going to do when...

Thank you, and I appreciate that. I’ve read all that in the Brilliant North 20/20, which, like I said, I think is a good document. What I’m more interested in right now is already we’re including the reference on job ads to indicate that persons with disabilities should identify their disability and indicate that they need to be accommodated. We’ve also got this great diversity officer that this young man in question actually contacted and got information on how to apply, what to do, what to indicate in his cover letter, and he applied on the job at Stanton. At the end of the day, after he...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On June 2, 2009, the Minister of Human Resources committed to increasing the representation of persons living with disabilities in the GNWT public service. To accomplish this, the department and the Minister initiated several actions. These include the creation of an Advisory Committee on Employability, the implementation of a diversity officer to help counsel persons with disabilities through the GNWT hiring process, inclusion of specific references in job ads to applicants asking them to identify that they live with a disability and may require accommodation, and...

The Minister actually hit on the second part. After I talked about music, I was going to say there is a significant amount of other product. In looking at it, can the Minister commit to putting together some sort of package that is easily accessible to people so that they can see or even listen to some of the product, even maybe link to some of the artists’ websites so that more people can get a wider range of an idea of what some of our fantastic northern artists, performing artists, musicians, painters, writers, authors are doing?

We should be very proud of the product that exists and the...

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Lafferty.