Wendy Bisaro

Thanks to the Minister. I can appreciate that you can’t do everything. I would like to know where it’s at. In terms of a time frame, is it something that you’ll get to before the end of the 17th Assembly or not? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple of questions here, but I’ll first ask a question following up on Mr. Dolynny’s question about the Anti-Poverty Strategy funding. The action plan for the Anti-Poverty Strategy hasn’t yet been finalized. That’s going to happen sometime in the next number of months and I certainly look forward to that, but somewhere in the back of my mind I thought that I had been advised that once the action plan was done, in addition to the money that’s in this current budget, that there might be a supp coming forward to fund the actions in the action plan. So I’d like to...

That’s good. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I didn’t really hear an answer to my question, so I’d like to ask the Minister if he, with all this information that’s been compiled between the department and the education authorities, would he commit to providing to me and to other Members a school-by-school indication of pupil-teacher ratio as it stands now in each school in the territory?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A couple of questions here. There is a large increase in grants and contributions and a fairly large increase in fees and payments. Could I get an explanation of what those increases are for, from, to, et cetera?

Thanks to the Minister. I do want to move forward, as well, but I don’t want to move forward at the expense of some education authorities. I appreciate that the department is monitoring, but I did ask the Minister when this commitment will start. If an education authority goes over the 16 to 1 PTR in the very first year that their funding is reduced, is that when the commitment kicks in?

The other part of this is I would like to know from the Minister if this commitment is ongoing, so once we get beyond the implementation of junior kindergarten and something changes so an education authority...

Thanks to the Minister for that confirmation. I wanted to make a comment to the loss in this year’s budget of the money for oral health care. It was $468,000, I believe. I know that this was federal money, but I think the Minister heard from the Social Programs committee that this is something which the committee considers to be really important, a basic prevention program for young children. I know that the Minister has said in I think it was in his response to people’s comments that there is a plan for oral health, that we’re studying what we’re doing and we’re going to have a plan sometime...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The deeper I delve into the 2014-15 budget, the more confused I become. Regular Members have been given huge amounts of information in the last two weeks and instead of clarity, it has only served to confuse. It didn’t have to be this way. The Finance Minister and Cabinet could have chosen to be fulsome, clear and concise in their meetings with Regular Members, but they have been anything but.

We’ve had briefings on the government’s fiscal strategy, on the budget before us, on the status of employee positions and each briefing obfuscates the financial picture a little...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Finance. The revenue summary in the 2014-15 Main Estimates, Department of Finance, page 5-9, lists personal income tax at $104.8 million and corporate income tax at $53.1 million. The 2014-15 budget address stated these revenues will be about $30 million lower than forecasted.

Please advise, in dollars, how much personal income tax and corporate income tax revenues are expected in fiscal year 2014-15, including the anticipated loss of $30 million.

Please advise the total expected revenues, in dollars, for the fiscal year 2014-15.

Please...

I’ve mentioned but a few of the tactics that we should be putting in place if we’re serious about keeping Northerners in the North.

The Finance Minister has said that the government is working on some things already to accomplish the 2,000 in five years goal. The Minister has today been given a number of suggestions by me and others which can be incorporated into whatever plan the government has. Members need to hear just what that plan is and we need to hear it sooner rather than later. I look forward to critiquing that plan, hopefully in the near future. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.