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.

One of the jobs that Members take as committee is to also monitor what’s going on, and when we receive a report and see recommendations in there, it’s very helpful for us to get some kind of an update on where the recommendations are at. If the coroner is following up, that’s one thing, but is there any opportunity for a department, whether it be Justice or whether it be individual departments who have received the recommendation, but is it conceivable that standing committee could get some kind of an update on recommendations in coroners’ reports? It doesn’t have to be for every report, but...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Two questions that I believe we discussed when we were reviewing the business plans but I’m not sure, so I’d like to raise them. I forgot to raise them in my general comments. With the rental office, we now have a rental officer and a deputy or an assistant rental officer. We have seen over the last couple of years that the number of inquiries and the needs within that rental office have increased considerably. I would like to know whether or not having the two officers in the office is enough or is there consideration by the department to add a third person to handle the...

So, to the Minister: What’s the expected date of construction and when might the facility be open? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’d like to continue with TD 188-17(5), continuing with the Department of Justice and, time permitting, start on the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment.