Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions for the Minister of Transportation today. It has been at least 10 days since I brought up the issue of dredging in the Northwest Territories being a requirement and a need.

Has the Minister sent off any communication to the federal Minister responsible for dredging to deal with this issue? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, I would take that information. I look forward to that.

I wonder if I could also get a copy of the letter that was sent to the federal Minister. Thank you.

I’m going to have to pry the details from the Minister. Can I get more detailed information? Was that letter signed off, and which federal Ministers was it cc’d to and who was it communicated to? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister has talked about their website. Will the consultant have a link to their website on how to contact them directly to provide their input through the website and through public process? Thank you.

Can the Minister please provide us with the information of who the consultant is? Can we publicly display who that consultant is, how they can be contacted for the public and DEAs to provide their comments sooner than later? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise too today, along with my colleagues, to discuss Education Week. Obviously, with Education Week we think of our teachers. We had the opportunity to talk to the NWT Teachers’ Association. We are very thankful for those teachers that work in the Northwest Territories. We all know, in our personal lives, teachers that helped us out to get to where we are today.

These teachers are working hard, in the evenings and on some of their own time. We talked recently about some of the sporting events and how some communities do really well in certain sports because of the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a few general comments for this department. Obviously, I think almost everybody has spoken of the disastrous fire season and we talked about in the past and business plans and stuff like that about the base, and I guess it’s the cost of fire suppression is going to be the cost, I guess. Has there been any consideration in this budget to up that base of fire suppression? We know over a period of time there have been expenditures, and obviously last year was an exceptional year. Obviously, we wouldn’t want to set that as the benchmark, but is the department...

As of yesterday the Hay River DEA had not heard from this consultant. The South Slave District Education Authority had meetings just recently and nothing on their minutes indicated that they had a meeting with the consultant.

Can the Minister indicate to me when this consultant will be in the South Slave area or the Hay River area? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll have questions for the Minister of Education today following up on my Member’s statement. The questions that I have are about the junior kindergarten review.

Can the Minister indicate where that review currently sits in the review of junior kindergarten? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to talk about decentralization. I’ve spoken of this many times in the House. I know Hay River has had some opportunities to get some of this decentralization, but I’m still a little bit disturbed in the fact that we don’t have a general plan for decentralization. We don’t have a plan of how many jobs are going to get out to the smaller communities, how we’re going to do that.

When we started in this Assembly, it was a priority. We were looking at all the issues that are there, whether it’s housing or office space, or how do we do that staffing. We’ve heard...