Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to recognize Marino Casebeer, a constituent of mine. I believe he’s just gotten a job recently with Arctic Energy Alliance, so I suspect he’s here for the announcement later today. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister avoiding my question, which is the fact that the parents posed all of these formal questions to the Minister. Will he be formally responding to them? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions will be for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. It is, yet again, about the Yellowknife school problem. Mr. Speaker, my question will be framed around lack of consistency, clarity and practice throughout the Northwest Territories where there is more than one school in that community. Is there any ECE legislative authority, policy or directive that is enforceable which points to a minimum capacity level that community schools must be at, and, if they are not, are they either amalgamated or closed?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t deny that the Finance Minister was correct on that information. However, I’m talking about a proactive approach that actually gets ahead of the problem before it gets away from us. I’m talking about getting ahead of the problem so we don’t have to work on trying to force and try to reach a compromise to have these big, deep, forensic-style audits. So, Mr. Speaker, the fact is the Auditor General will do this. All we have to do is put it in a line item now that we have the FAA open. Would the Minister reconsider that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions will follow the line my Member’s statement drew out, so my questions will be directed to the Minister of Finance. Mr. Speaker, in short, I want to make sure our Crown corporations are giving all the NWT citizens value for money. Mr. Speaker, my question, therefore, is, is there a value to the directors of the Crown corporations and the GNWT shareholders in conducting occasional performance audits on Crown corporations? Can the Minister indicate whether there has been any progress on this file since I raised the issue back in February 2006? Thank you, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In February 2006, I made a statement on the need to perform regular performance or value for money audits on Crown corporations owned by the GNWT. At the time, the Finance Minister indicated he was open to examining the issue and possibly considering an expanded role for our very own Audit Bureau. Over a year has gone by and I have yet to hear anything from our fine Finance Minister on this issue and there have been no concrete steps on implementation of this idea.

We all know that Crown corporations are subject to annual financial audits by the Auditor General’s office...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, Mr. Speaker, I urge the Minister to find an alternative solution because he talks about all of this work he has done for over the last two to three, even almost four years by striking out a report and striking out a committee and getting a mediator for the committee. You can only drag one school board to the committee discussions if they came with the point of view that they were going to get a school or else they didn’t want to participate. Why is the Minister not putting forward the shared solution so this community can more forward? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Often, when people respond at the spur of the moment on unique circumstances, I think they make a lot of mistakes, Mr. Speaker. That speaks to the frustration of the parents. So speaking to that issue, will the Minister be answering all of those questions posed by the parents so we can get on and find a solution to this issue? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If I can take the Minister up on his small, but -- I heard it -- olive branch on that as something they can look at, what will we be looking at and how soon will we get some information back from the Minister on the direction that I’ve been trying to draw out? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the offer from the Minister. Mr. Speaker, in the letter I tabled last week -- and the Finance Minister does have a copy of this -- Sheila Fraser, our top Auditor General here, talks about the great things value for service that audits do. Would the Minister be willing to take a serious look at this letter and take the Auditor General’s office of Canada up on the service they are willing to provide to ensure we have value for service in our Crown corporations?