Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have spoken to some educators out there and they have said that when they recognize truancy and they phone these parents and there is no answer, there is nowhere for them to truly go. Why has the Department of Education, Culture and Employment never stepped in to own up to their responsibility to deal with truancy? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, I would like to focus on a serious issue that seems to be rising in our schools. It is truancy. Mr. Speaker, it takes a whole community to raise children. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to participate. Schools can only do so much. Some parents seem to leave it up to the child or teenager to take their education in their own hands. Tardiness and lack of attendance affect our children and their ability to stay focussed at school and eventually some students drop out unless there is some form of intervention.

I have spoken with staff at various schools, and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would like to definitely speak in support of the Justice Minister's move to revert the court registries cuts both in Inuvik and in Hay River. Although this decision was done a little while ago, I wish he would have continued the tone of access to justice and how I often speak in favour of that, the fact that justice is often served better by the people and when the people can get it. Quite often that is a problem.

I did speak the other day in regard to my support to see action with the legal aid office getting that future support, again continuing...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Assuming the Minister can’t provide that tonight, from the sounds of that answer, if the Minister could provide for the last three years what regular basis means, I would certainly accept that in written form, so he doesn’t have to answer that tonight. I want to know what regular basis means. I would be willing to accept that if he doesn’t have that detail.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can only assume that we could take somewhat of a profit factor out in order to keep stabilizing this fuel by litre. Because if fuel is set at $1.24 in Wekweti, that would almost seem I couldn't say unaffordable, but I certainly would say that it's cost prohibitive to drive anything that requires fuel, at that rate. Spending about $100 to fill up your skidoo, I don't know…So is the principle of some of this in order to keep the cost down where reasonable where we can, do we eliminate the profit factor out of this? Again, I realize that there isn't tons of factor...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In other words, I guess we're providing some type of subsidy benefit, and I think it's at least important that we put it on the record. I'm just trying to understand what are we qualifying. How are we going to qualify this number and how are we going to identify it? At this stage, without knowing more information, I can't say I have a concern or I don't have a concern. Yet, it's kind of interesting to find out what type of subsidy are we subsiding this to. At least we need to identify it and not be afraid of the number.

The other thing is how do we set rates in...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a motion for page 7-19. I move that this committee recommends that the government undertake to develop a concrete plan with specific actions to address the absence of policing services in small communities in the NWT;

Further, that the plan and its associated cost estimate be presented to the Standing Committee on Social Programs before or during the review of the 2006-2009 Business Plans. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Out of those 11, how many days of the year do they have some type of presence? Do we have someone there travelling back and forth to establish some type of fiscal presence, be it for one day? We can pick one community. I'll let the Minister pick a community. How often do we have a physical presence from the RCMP in those communities? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your answer there, Mr. Minister. In regard to the six speculative positions at this time that sort of go back to the report, I can't say they're six firm positions at this time because we're sort of looking into the future, so I hope we don't argue over the number as opposed to the point, which is would this Minister consider options of maybe working with this side of the House in us maybe supporting a supplementary appropriation to help support that injection of those six members? When we have communities that don't have policing, our job here is to...