Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I have indicated in my response earlier, I have directed the staff to see if there is any benefit of having scheduled services. We will have those results over the winter and we will take direction from the results and move forward for the next season. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’d gladly work with the community of Behchoko to look at identifying the resources that that community needs. There is already some resources that we can, upfront, identify that has not been tapped into. There’s a number of other program dollars that we have that are available for the community to apply for through the youth core for some youth at risk programs. We also have youth contributions. We also have a youth advisor. We have trapper training programs and this year we’ve launched a website that will be coming on stream this fall. That can be certainly a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, over the last couple of years we’ve been working hard in the department to expand our youth programs. Last year we were able to expand our program funding by another half a million dollars to run a number of pilot projects. We have a number of projects that have been very successful. Over this last while, a lot of communities have been applying for the Community Initiatives Program, which has a budget of $1 million to use towards building and constructing of infrastructure and these have included youth drop-in centres or youth centres. We’ve...

The Member is correct; the Minister does have a parking stall there. We do a lot of business in the airport. We are responsible for the airport. The Premier does not have a parking stall, unless he’s taken a nameplate and put it over the RCMP.

---Laughter

As far as I know, we'll have to go back and take a look, but as far as I know it's only the Minister of Transportation and the RCMP that have nameplates, along with rental vehicles and companies of that nature. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is a subject that we are starting to find quite frustrating and just keeps being put on the back burner. In response to another question from one of my colleagues, the Premier spoke about options. We may have other options. I would like to know what those options are. Do we have some drastic options for them to finally start paying attention to our demands? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Premier for the response. Years ago the leaders used to sit and discuss issues amongst themselves, but nowadays it seems like too much of that responsibility is passed on to bureaucrats or negotiators. I would like to ask the Premier if he, as the Premier, and the leaders of the aboriginal groups in the Northwest Territories, the grand chiefs, the chairs, the presidents, just the leaders themselves, have you ever sat in a room and tried to iron out some of these details? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We would be glad to share that information with the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; the ferry at Fort Simpson and other locations over the years have been put on a scheduled service. The intention was to see if it would result in some savings in terms of fuel. Over the last couple of months, I directed out staff to do an analysis of whether that is the case to see if there is any positive results of having scheduled service versus on-call and on-demand service. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I’m not sure if I heard a question in there. We have certainly agreed with some of the principles that were mentioned by the honourable Member regarding prevention. We have a number of programs that are earmarked towards the youth at risk. We are also looking at ways we could encourage our youth to become good leaders, good role models. We’ve started a number of programs that encourage that and we continue to work with our youth in setting up conferences where they can speak up and have their voices heard. We’ve also embarked on setting up a Youth Ambassador Program that we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, being elected to public office is something that we should not take lightly. A lot of people think being elected to public office is a popularity contest, but I don’t agree with that. I think people now see a lot more to it than that. That being said, Mr. Speaker, when we are elected we should be held accountable to the very people that represent us. I always like to think that I am a reflection of the community that I represent. By the same token, Cabinet is a representative of this side of the House. We elect the Cabinet Members, we put them there, and...