Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank my colleagues, Mrs. Groenewegen and Mr. Miltenberger, for bringing forward this motion. They were the mover and seconder of this motion, but we did discuss this topic in Caucus several times and it has been done with heavy heart and consideration of a whole bunch of different issues.

I will not be supporting the motion because I feel that it’s not something we should be doing. I went home, talked to my constituents and a bunch of them had concerns and issues with it. The other thing is that as a member of the Board of Management here in the...

I appreciate that they would have to do this, but what is the mechanism that the government uses to make sure that this is being done? Obviously, we’re hearing those concerns in our community and it’s not being fulfilled. The territorial NGOs that have agents in Hay River are not being represented.

What is the government doing to make sure that these mandates are being fulfilled?

I’ve received information from one of the organizations, the Head Start program, that basically they had been informed that they are now a zero to three not a three/four, and I guess they’re quite disturbed in the fact that they have been running this for over 20 years. They were asked to realign after the Department of Education has done that.

How can the Minister justify that we’re changing the focus to zero to three when these organizations were established to do three to four?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask some questions to the Premier about the NGO. It looks like he was very well versed in the NGO field today and I had some questions about he talked about the mandates of NGOs and that they don’t look at that.

I’m wondering, because I’ve heard some concerns from the Hay River NGOs that are in that area, that the territorial NGOs that are set up and established in Yellowknife are not providing funding out into the regions.

Can the Minister please provide me some direction on how those NGOs’ mandates are looked at, and if they’re providing a territorial...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week I had questions for the Minister of Education on junior kindergarten. I want to follow up with some questions about the funding for other programs that are going to be affected by junior kindergarten.

Has the Department of Education looked into the effects of taking four-year-olds out of the systems we have? I’ll use Hay River as an example, obviously. We have a playschool, we have Growing Together and we have a Head Start program. These are programs that are affected by that, so I’m wondering if the department has looked into the effect of the enrolment in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d also like to recognize Kim Mabbitt from Hay River. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, following in the footsteps of the other Members and the fact that this being the first bill of 10 to come forward, I thought it would be a good point to make some comments about the whole process and the fact that there is very limited debate and discussion on the mirror legislation. I’m not that critical of that issue because I know when we were discussing devolution that mirror legislation was one of those requirements of devolution. I was supportive of devolution. Most of my constituents were supportive of devolution, so I think, for the most part, I’m very...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I woke up thinking of Stompin’ Tom this morning. It’s hockey night tonight because tonight we start Polar Pond Hockey in Hay River. It’s an annual event, a spring event. The 10 rinks are built on the Hay River. The big blue tent is up and being fitted with facilities for the upcoming event. There are concessions there this weekend. The event was a question mark this year. It was a question because of Arctic Winter Games and because of so many factors going on whether we’d do it this year or we’d skip. But the crew all got together and said, you know what? We’re going to...

Mr. Speaker, the importance of these roads is obvious. In the beginning, getting them open and then keeping them open as long as we can is very key. That’s the success of the road.

So I guess the question to the Minister is – I also questioned last week about the maintenance – are we continuing to maintain these roads currently or are we shut down on maintenance and letting the weather take its course?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister of Transportation some questions about the Mackenzie Valley road. He had a Minister’s speech about it today, and last week I was asking questions on the maintenance of the road.

My first question for the Minister is: What is the current status of the Mackenzie Valley road? Is it closed to nighttime only or have we been able to keep it open all week?