Thank you, Mr. Bell. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, my questions this morning are for Mr. Dent as the Minister responsible for the Workers' Compensation Board for Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. Can the Minister advise, Mr. Speaker, whether the board of governors of the WCB will be considering the issue of fairness to restaurant owners and their lopsided rate structure, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. The honourable Minister responsible for the Workers' Compensation Board, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think it's important to note, Mr. Speaker, that the governance council is made up of small business owners, employer representatives and workers themselves. So the stakeholders are the ones who make up the governance council and they are the ones who run the WCB. Mr. Braden has asked whether or not they will consider these complaints by the quick service restaurants. I'm advised that the governance council did consider them at their meeting last week and that the chair has offered to meet with the quick service restaurant owners in Yellowknife this week to discuss the outcome of that meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, why has it taken three years? This group of businesspeople represent quite a number of employees, quite a large chunk of assessment revenue for the Northwest Territories. Why has it taken three years and, of late, fairly vigorous intervention by several MLAs to get the WCB to begin to take their interest seriously? Why has it taken so long?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that would be a great question for the governance council to answer, but I understand that there has been no formal communication. There was no formal communication three years ago asking for an explanation of this, is what I've been advised. I've talked to the governance council about this. It hasn't been something that's come up. The people who are on the governance council are the people who are available to business owners to call and they could have very well put that question to them earlier. I think that what is perhaps happening is the answers that are being received are not the ones that people want to hear. That may be the situation that we're looking at, rather than having not communicated. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Final supplementary, Mr. Braden.

You know, Mr. Speaker, it may well be that once some good communication has been established and some understandings are out there that there will be an agreement on what's fair and where everybody can go. But, Mr. Speaker, the Minister has just sort of posed the next and the most obvious question. What then are the opportunities that the WCB provides to stakeholders, like business owners, who are paying for this system, to be taken before the WCB and to have themselves held accountable? Why does it take, or does it take some informal gathering or connection with a member of the board to have a problem heard? Is there no regular way for the employers to be heard before the WCB and to hold that board of governors accountable? Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, all that it takes is a formal letter asking for an opportunity to discuss an issue, and the WCB holds public meetings every time they have a board meeting. So there have been public meetings advertised in the paper that have been held in Yellowknife and other communities across the North that business owners and workers could have showed up at to bring their issues to the attention of the governance council if they so wished. So those are the opportunities that are there. I think that hopefully we will see that the governance council will continue to look for other opportunities to increase the ways in which they can communicate with their stakeholders. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Monfwi, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. (Translation) My Member's statement was regarding the Chief Jimmy Bruneau School and the statement that he made about strong like two people. (Translation ends)

...program that includes northern aboriginal language, cultural, traditional skills, land claims, and the history of the North. I'd like to ask the Minister of ECE what kind of funding arrangement is in place with the current Tlicho Community Services Agency to deliver cultural and language programming in the Tlicho region. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't have the breakdown in dollars for each individual region. In this year's budget, we're proposing $7.5 million that will be spent across the Northwest Territories for aboriginal language and culture. The way in which that is broken out by education authority is based on the number of aboriginal children in each DEC, and it's pretty much done on...It's based on a formula, so a big part of the allocation is by student. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my next question is, how does the current funding reflect the rising cost of fuel that's been here in the North, the high cost of fuel, and the high cost of equipment needed to effectively run these types of cultural programs? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the past two years there's been approximately an eight percent increase in the amount of money in the program across the Northwest Territories. Whether or not that reflects the cost of fuel in this year, I can't say for sure. It probably doesn't, based on how much fuel has gone up. But I'm not sure exactly how much of the proportion of that funding would have to go for fuel. So each of the divisional education councils are going to approach this differently and in some cases it may be adequate for the increases and in other cases it won't. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Final supplementary, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. As the Minister identified that the high cost of fuel, he's not sure if it's part of the eight percent increase, but I'd like to highlight that. I guess the question to the department is, is the department willing to work directly with the schools to identify ways to alleviate the high cost to deliver these effective cultural programming to promote even more cultural programs? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I listened to the Member's statement today with great interest because he's absolutely right that the students who do the best in our system are those who are immersed in their own language and culture. He is right that we hold up the schools in the Tlicho region as examples for others across the Territories to look at when we talk about success. So, yes, we'd be happy to work with all of our partners in all of the regions to see what we could do to improve our efforts to immerse our students in the aboriginal languages and cultures. Thank you.