Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As mentioned by the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment on Tuesday, this is Heritage Week and yesterday was Heritage Day. Here in the city of Yellowknife, we are lucky to have an active and effective Heritage Committee. This group of volunteers and city councillors work to preserve this young city’s heritage, to publicize the history of the city and to educate Yellowknifers about the city’s heritage. Over the years, the Yellowknife Heritage Committee has managed to save some of Yellowknife’s original buildings from demolition. They have put in place a...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that Members on this side of the House have said that they don’t want to lose this money and I, at the risk of offending anybody, and this is not my intention, but there’s certainly schools in Yellowknife that have the same difficulties that the schools in the communities do and have students who need the breakfast money or whatever.

My concern with this particular pot of money, our understanding was that it was going to be used for a study and I appreciate the department’s reaction to the Social Programs committee’s advice and comments and that it has now...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to both these gentlemen for the answer. I appreciate that this is the way that it is, but I think it’s probably creating stresses and strains on education authorities if they’re getting less funding, even though it may not be a huge amount of money, but they’re getting less funding, but at the same time they’re getting more and more students who require individual education assistance and one-on-one situations with particular students. So I’d like to ask the Minister whether or not this problem has been identified for him by the chairs of the education...

Thank you very much for that, and my apologies, my brain seems to be slowing right down here or maybe it’s slower than it was before. I wanted to ask one more question with regard to inclusive schooling funding just to see if I can try and understand the situation here.

Yesterday, I believe, I was advised that the amount for inclusive schooling is changing to reflect changes in enrolment, if Hansard is correct. So if I’m to understand the answer from Mr. Devitt we are now tying inclusive schooling funding to enrolments. So maybe I could get a clarification as to whether or not that...

Thank you, I’m aware that the enrolments have gone down. Do we know how much, please?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to ask a couple of questions with regard to the numbers that are on page 10-17. There is what I think is a very large increase in education operations and development on that page. It goes from $1.5 million to $3.5 million. Could I get an explanation of what this $2 million is buying us? Thank you.

Thanks to the Premier. I know that he’s mentioned that he would come to Members. I’m not so sure that this requires the approval, so to speak, of Members. I think to reach out to NGOs is something that could be done without letting us know, but I don’t know we need to give you the approval to do that. I will be tabling a list of the anti-poverty supporters later on this afternoon, so that will give the government a list to work from.

A number of years ago the government established a Coalition Against Family Violence. In my estimation, it’s been a very successful coalition and the actions that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Premier. I mentioned in my Member’s statement that I had been holding a Christmas present for him for some time and that I had given that to him today at noon. I thought it was pretty nice too. Now that the Premier has his Christmas present, or that the Legislative Assembly has the Christmas present -- because it is addressed to all of us -- I would like to ask the Premier if he could advise us, and I mean Members and also the representative of the presenters of the present, what he will do with his or our present now that he has...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier today I presented the Premier with a belated Christmas present, one that I had been safekeeping for him. In December of last year, in the absence of any Members of the Executive Council, I accepted a present from a group of people, people representing social organizations in Yellowknife and the NWT as a whole. This informal alliance of 14 organizations had come to the Legislative Assembly to give the Legislative Assembly a Christmas present, a gift of past reports which detail the causes and effects of poverty in the NWT, and they asked for only one...

Thanks to the Minister for the answer. I think you probably are going to hear from authorities in relation to this. If they’ve identified it as a problem, they’re going to continue to go after you for adequate funding to deal with these particular special needs students. I’d like to know if there’s any consideration within the department... Has the Minister considered changing the approach for funding for inclusive schooling instead of doing it as a lump sum based on total enrolment? Is there any possibility that funding may be changed so that it is applied to a particular student and the...