Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all I would like to thank the Premier, the Minister of Education and the Cabinet very much for their appropriate response today through the Premier’s statement in the matter of Junior Kindergarten. Mr. Speaker, putting this rollout on pause for now until we are certain that we have checked out all the possibilities is welcomed and appreciated very much.

On the topic of going forward and doing the assessment and a thorough investigation of how we’re going to roll this out eventually, I’d like to ask, what are the chances that we could put this under a different...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With all the challenges that we face, it’s a sincere pleasure when I have the opportunity to stand in this House and celebrate outstanding success and achievement.

Today I want to give recognition to the South Slave Divisional Education Council for taking top honours in the Education category at the National Public Sector Leadership Awards given out earlier this year for achievement in 2013.

These awards celebrate innovation and excellence in the public sector, and this achievement marks the first time a school board and an organization from the NWT has won an IPAC...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to again say thank you to the Minister and his department for putting this on pause until we can get it right.

Will the Minister keep us apprised? I will be very interested to see what the 23 communities do, and I’d like to ask the Minister if he’d keep us apprised of the feedback he gets from those communities. Thank you.

I will take comfort in the words the Minister used, “a comprehensive review.” Because I think if we are comprehensive, we have to look at the existing infrastructure, facilities, programing in the communities and decide what is best on a community-by-community basis.

In the statement today it indicates that communities who have already begun the Junior Kindergarten program, and we hear that there’s everything from some communities where there’s one little person taking that, to communities like Mr. Blake’s, where there are 14 four-year-olds that have entered the school system. So in those...

Mr. Kaulback was a keynote speaker at an educational conference in South Africa last year and is presently working on an iPad app, called “Bush Cree,” that acts as a First Nations storybook.

I want to ask Members of this House today to join me in congratulating Curtis Brown and Brent Kaulback for their achievements and thank them for their dedication to our students. When people of this calibre put their heart and soul into their work, it is our children that are the winners. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Okay, I’ve got two and a half minutes here.

---Laughter

At this time of year, I sometimes turn my mind towards the anniversary of when I came to Hay River. It was November 4th forty years ago this November when my parents took me to the Union Station in Toronto and dropped me off. I arrived in Hay River on November 7th and the next day I turned 18, so you do the math.

Mr. Speaker, I chose Hay River and I have to tell you I didn’t have any post-secondary education and I wasn’t a great student. I was not voted the most likely to succeed when I left my high school, but I came...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would also like to recognize Mayor Furlong today. We’ve listed off some of the things that he has served the North and in what capacity he has served the North for many years, but I particularly want to thank him today for the time he took to make his film to share his own journey with cancer and that they shared that with other Northerners so they would be aware.

One little funny story, when I first met the mayor and I was introduced, he said his name was Charlie, but Charles Furlong. So I’d like to welcome Charles Furlong in the gallery today. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I move that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources retain and continue to operate the existing fleet of government-owned Canadair CL-215 amphibious firefighting aircraft; and further, that the department of Environment and Natural Resources work closely with Municipal and Community Affairs’ School of Community Government to expand effort in training and developing community firefighters in all regions to promote awareness of fire protection responsibility at the community level. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I’m going to go back and check Hansard and see how many words I actually got in in that two and a half minutes.

People need to manage their expectations. We need to empower people to give them choices and options of how they can control their cost of living. People also need to take personal responsibility.

You know, I’m probably not going to be the most popular MLA in the Northwest Territories for saying this right now, but when we talk about the cost of living in all these communities, wouldn’t it be an interesting exercise to see in every community of the Northwest Territories how much...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I stated yesterday in the House, I am not opposed to the purchase of the new 802 firefighting aircraft, the ordering of those. They will be on the ground, I assume, around 2017. But I think that in spite of some of the challenges with the 215s, I think it is still worth hanging on to them. Mr. Miltenberger yesterday said that the overall cost of the firefighting season this past summer was $60 million and that it would cost around $3 million to keep this group of aircraft on the ground and on standby. It seems like it should be fairly good insurance if we end up...