Sandy Lee

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I ask a question on the $40,000 for the Yellowknife air terminal building? My understanding is this has something to do with contaminated areas or some areas there that need to be cleaned, but in this here it just says it’s for new baggage screening equipment and increased passenger volumes. Could I just get some more detail on that? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The information we have says to us that this is to provide funding for the purchase of property in Wha Ti and Rae-Edzo pursuant to the employee house purchase plan. I am afraid I don’t understand what this money is going toward. Is the government buying the units for the employees? May I have more elaboration on this? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I move that we report progress.

Thank you. Unless I missed it, I heard $60,000, but I didn’t hear the remainder of the dollar figures. May I have that, please?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, my understanding, from the information the Minister has provided to us, is that the Legal Services Board had toured the facility and saw that there might be some concerns about the privacy of the clients. They’ve asked for the window, for example, that is there right now -- because it’s a storefront location -- that those windows be frosted, so that privacy could be guaranteed. I am sure there are extra costs that are going to be incurred as a result of this space being a shoe store at the moment and having to be turned into an office space. The...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Could I get the Minister to explain why this money has been taken out of this budget? Thank you.

It doesn’t appear to be that we are making much progress there. I know that we have our negotiators, but we still haven’t heard much about what’s going on in that area. So while I support and I know that everyone here supports the economic gains and economic benefits that will come from the pipeline, it is really with heavy heart, because we have no guarantee that we are going to get our share of the resource revenues that we want to see and that we still don’t have power and control over things that we need to have in order to make the right public policies and guidelines and regulations...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to speak to this motion. Mr. Speaker, obviously the pipeline train is coming toward us and it’s probably actually right at our doorstep with the filing of the application just a few days ago. There’s no question we, as a government, are feeling squeezed because there are lots of things that we wanted to have in place before this pipeline project becomes a reality in order that our jurisdiction and our people receive the maximum benefits out of such a megaproject, a project that would be ranked worldwide as one of the biggest projects of our time. Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do believe we must come up with a more concrete and more focused response and preparedness for what is going to befall upon us socially and with this megaproject. I think we have to do more than just business as usual, Mr. Speaker, because there are some specific issues and specific fallouts that we are going to have from this mega resource development from transient workers. We are already seeing increased use of crack cocaine and more prostitution, promiscuity. This report is talking about things like that. People use easy money frivolously on gambling. We are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’ve been sort of tasked, I guess by Members on this side, to question the social impacts of the departments, which I am happy to do because I know that it is one that is a concern of all of us on this side and I think I will direct my questions to the Minister responsible for women, the honourable Minister Dent. Mr. Speaker, I realize that social impacts of mega resource development projects are not women’s issues alone, but there are a lot of issues that we need to deal with and there is no question that these important issues are not being discussed at...