Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to revert to item 8 on the Order Paper, written questions.

---Unanimous consent granted

Okay. I’m glad you’ll go check on that, but I guess I struggle to understand how we put a comment like this in our budget and we don’t really know how to explain it. I’ll leave it at that.

Thanks to the Minister. So, you know, we are now adding some to the wages to some of the early childhood educators and that’s a great thing. If we have the lowest paid workers, we really ought to be doing something to increase their pay. But I’d like to know from the Minister how that is intended to assist daycares in their overall expenses. I don’t believe there’s been an increase in the daily subsidy to daycares for quite some time.

So I’d like to ask the Minister, how does assisting the workers with their wages help the daycare with their costs of running their business, and when was the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just one question here and it’s the text at the bottom of the page. Differences in the amounts are due to accounting policy differences between basically the methods used by the NWT Liquor Commission and the methods used by the GNWT. That seems a little strange to me.

What page are we on, Madam Chair?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions today for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. There is a lot going on at Education, Culture and Employment these days, lots of change, lots of action plans, and as part of the Early Childhood Development Action Plan, last week the Minister made a statement and he announced the start of a wage supplement program. He told us about the program last year, and according to the Minister’s statement, the first payments of the wage supplement were made on February 13th, so just last Friday.

Daycares and preschools struggle to make ends meet...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to ask, there’s a great variance in the numbers between 2013-14 actuals and then the main estimates for 2014-15 and then the estimates for 2015-16. We have $6 million and then $11 million and then back to almost $7 million in 2015-16. Why the very large drop from the estimates in 2014-15 to what we’re estimating in 2015-16? Thank you.

Okay. Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the DM for that. That explains that, and I’m glad we’re going to put in the $250,000. That’s great.

My other question has to do with the Northwest Territories Power Corporation general rate application. I see that in ’15-16 there is no grant, no contribution there. My question goes to the impact of the end of this contribution and this subsidy which has given us bit of a rate holiday. How is that going to impact the power bills of residents? What am I going to see on my power bill, for instance, in ’15-16 since we’re no longer contributing anything to...

Mr. Chair, thanks for the information. I certainly look forward to seeing the reports twice annually. I think that’s a very good step forward. I want to thank the Minister for his commitment to committee.

It is my understanding that the Program Review Office has been doing a review of student housing. I think it goes back to almost a year ago now. Can the Minister advise whether or not that review is finished, and if not, when it will be? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a question here with regards to the Program Review Office. I note in the description that the PRO is responsible to… They have formularies of business. One of them is to report on results with a view to recommending modifications or improvements. I think it’s been mentioned once or twice in our discussions of the budget to date, but I’d like to know from the Minister if there is any consideration on the part of the department to make the Program Review Office recommendations binding on departments. Is that something that the Finance department is considering...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have one question here. I presume it should be on this page with the revenue summary, but I’d like to know where the net fiscal benefit for the resource revenue amounts that we receive is shown in the revenue summary.