Jane Groenewegen

In the case of this particular NGO I would certainly be happy to provide the detail to the Minister on the delay in approval, the delay in commencing the services that would normally be carried out by this office, and the amount of money that was related to that delay and get the Minister’s approval, I guess, if that’s the level that we have to take it to, to get the Minister’s approval to have that money re-profiled and reallocated for the remainder of that year. I’m happy to provide that to the Minister. I’m just hopeful that an NGO would not have to in all instances make such an application...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about NGO funding, multi-year funding. We have a fine group of volunteers in Hay River who went to some amount of work out of a genuine concern for offering services and programs to persons with disabilities in Hay River. We should have multi-year funding. They ended up with funding for one year. The funding was late in coming. There was no discretionary latitude applied to the money that they had received to allow them to re-profile some of those funds for the months that had been lost while they waited for approval.

I realize...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Committee for Persons with Disabilities has been operating in Hay River since May of 1994. In 2005 they opened an office and in 2008 they began operating a handi-van service, offering people with disabilities access to public transit. They have a governing board and are a non-profit organization operating on donations, fundraising and NGO funding from the GNWT.

The committee provides assistance to people with disabilities in areas such as acquiring adequate housing, locating employment, educational programs, social activities, income support assistance and family...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that we report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The committee would like to consider Committee Report 7-16(5), Report on Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Dog Act, and also Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Dog Act. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize in the visitor’s gallery today my new friends Peter and Tony from Haliburton, Ontario. They’re on a very long road trip. They have had careers in police work and in forestry and they’re here visiting us today. We welcome them to the Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to vote in favour of the motion as put forward by Ms. Bisaro. There was a lot of discussion and controversy over whether or not this clause that people have named a loophole, they’ve named it all kinds of different things. In fact, after listening to so much of the discussion around this particular clause, it’s my opinion that there’s a colossal misunderstanding and people taking extreme positions on what these things mean.

I think it boils down to the difference between the way that a pet dog is treated and the way that a working dog is treated. Both can be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve listened, with interest, to all the comments of my colleagues and I do appreciate Mr. Abernethy and the support that’s being shown here for the Leishman family. However, I will support the motion because this incident does deserve to be looked into and deserves to have a report provided to the family. But for Member after Member who has stood up and suggested that there has been something untruthful happen here, I resent that. That is pre-empting the results of an investigation. If the Members all on this side of the House already think that somebody has done...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was recently approached by a constituent who had serious concerns about the cost of Internet services in the Northwest Territories. Internet usage, transferring data, is estimated to cost about 3 to 5 cents per gigabyte in the provinces down south. Up north, once you go over your bandwidth cap, NorthwesTel, our main Internet service provider, charges Northerners at least $10 a gigabyte compared to only $2 to $5 per gigabyte down south.

In a recent agreement with wholesalers down south, Bell Canada sells 40 gigabytes of data for $4.25 and still makes a profit. That...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Committee would like to deal with Bills 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, and Minister’s Statement 65-16(5), Devolution Agreement-in-Principle, Impact on Land Claims and Protection of Aboriginal Rights.