Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the issue of barrier-free schools as well as their playgrounds. The issue at hand is simply that we have one particular school, and I have no doubt in my mind that there are many others throughout the Territory, that could use some support to make sure that the school and the playgrounds are barrier-free. Mr. Speaker, my hope is that the Minister will see this as a broader and long-term solution, recognizing, I know, we can’t solve every problem at once but we can certainly work towards doing our best today. Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment is: would he be able to look into this problem that N.J. Macpherson School is having, to see what support the Department of Education, Culture and Employment can provide at this time? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This is definitely an area that we need to look at with the schools. We are trying to make it as accessible as we possibly can, especially with the older infrastructure barrier-free schools. Those are the areas that we are always improving and enhancing, whether it be playground equipment or school accessing, the railings and so forth. Certainly I will work with the school boards and also with our department and with the MLA on where we need to identify those areas. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, I may applaud the Minister for a fantastic answer on dealing with this issue. Mr. Speaker, just one last question. I

certainly hope, as I view this as a territorial problem not just a Yellowknife problem -- and I stress that -- would the Minister look into the feasibility, and I stress, look into only the feasibility at this time about drawing it into a long-term program where we can ensure that all our schools are barrier-free and certainly accessible not just to our students but to our community? Because, as we all know, schools are schools during the day, but they are also the heart of the community in the evening when you want community functions and events. Mr. Speaker, I am looking towards the bigger picture. Would the Minister take a look and see if it is feasible to set up a funding program that could work towards these needs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, it is a territorial-wide challenge with some of these older facilities. So those are the areas that we need to highlight and my department has been working closely with the school boards to identify those areas barrier-free and try to identify some areas of funding, if that is required, working closely with the school boards. There are also parental advisory committees that we work closely with as well. Apparently there is funding allocated as well. Those are the areas that we need to discuss as a group. We will certainly talk further on this particular item. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister of Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d have to go to the department and confirm, but I believe the project has been deferred until next year. There was some concern, as the season progressed, with the amount of rain that we got and the saturation that the road became. Mr. Speaker, it’s something that we’d still like to move forward on. There were questions raised by the Member on some of the other projects in his riding, including Highway No. 7 that we had to defer. It’s really unfortunate; however, we can’t control the weather, and we’ll commit to having those projects

moved forward as soon as possible in the new year.

Certainly the residents of my riding were quite excited to have this project completed this year. However, we’re patient people and we’re glad to see that chipseal is coming, Mr. Speaker. I’d just like to know the department’s plans of any further work on chipsealing Highway No. 1 towards Fort Simpson beyond this in the new fiscal year 2010. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we’ve got a fairly aggressive plan to work on Highway No. 1 and other projects in the Member’s riding, including Highway No. 7. We certainly have heard the comments he made in his Member’s statement on a number of occasions and we’ve put together a budget over the next four years where we’ll be targeting roughly $30 million to...All the portions that require reconstruction, that Highway No. 1, needs to be widened from the border to Enterprise. We’re also looking at doing some reconstruction from the junction of Highway No. 3 towards Simpson and, of course, Highway No. 7 needs fairly significant investment in terms of upgrades. The road has been really deteriorating and it’s an aging piece of infrastructure with very poor soil conditions. We’re going to try to get that all fixed up as soon as we can. Thank you.

I’m pleased that certainly the department is making great strides and hopefully we can accomplish a lot of this work in 2010. In terms of Highway No. 7, Fort Liard residents have seen the B.C. side. They actually chipsealed their road up to the B.C. border, and they’re asking me continuously when are we going to re-chipseal the road from Fort Liard back to the B.C. border once again. They’re also looking to see the completion of the reconstruction that’s occurring there. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, that’s a difficult question to answer at this point. We are still doing a lot of work on the Highway No. 7 section, including an engineering assessment and functional design. We’re also doing some of the necessary material preparation, crushing of the kilometre 3 and doing some of the upgrades that are required.

As to doing some actual chipseal, maybe. It’s not something that we’ve decided as of yet. It’s something that we’d like to do. Chipseal, of course, is something that really is dependent on the base and we’d have to be convinced that the road is going to hold up. It will be a decision that we will consider, but it’s not a decision we have made as of today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Is the Minister of Transportation prepared

to see that the chipseal will return to the residents of Fort Liard as they travel to B.C.? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, it’s our goal to see chipseal applied to most of our roads, if not all of them, for the long term. As of yet, we haven’t been able to really prove that it will stay in sandy conditions such as the Fort Liard area. We know some work was done on the B.C. side. We’re going to take a look at that and see if we can do some test areas over the next while. We’d also like to do chipsealing on Highway No. 8 and other highways, for example. We think it’s going to solve some of our safety issues and reduce some of the maintenance required, but we still have to ensure that it’s going to work and we have to make sure we have our technology all figured out before we do that. But that’s our goal.

We’re also, Mr. Speaker, trying out different products that we think may be more durable than chipseal. Of course, any time you start moving that area, the costs go up. There’s still a lot of work and a lot of research that we need to do, but that’s our intentions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Human Resources. I would like to thank the Minister for his statement about the NWT Public Service Strategic Plan and I would like to follow up with a couple of questions.

I note that the Minister talked about goal two under this plan: Engage: Magnetic Attraction. I’d like to know what’s in this particular plan relative to an evaluation of the GNWT’s Affirmative Action Policy, specifically in light of the priority lists as outlined not in the Affirmative Action Policy but in our Human Resource Manual. We have two lists, one for non-management jobs and one for management jobs, and they’re not the same. I’d like to know from the Minister what kind of an evaluation of the AA Policy is being contemplated specifically in terms of priority lists. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have our Aboriginal Affirmative Action Committee that is helping us in reviewing the affirmative action plan and certainly we are also reviewing it with regard to the other categories that are provided for under that plan. Thank you.

I’m not quite sure; the Minister said an affirmative action plan. I don’t know if he meant plan or policy, but if there is a review going on, how encompassing is this review, what are the terms of reference of this review and when might we expect it? Thank you.

We are having the committee work with each of the regions and we are expecting that they will come forward with some recommendations in approximately six months or so.

Six months? I guess that’s great. I’m still not sure whether or not that encompasses looking at the priority lists in the resource manual, but I’ll leave it at that.

In the Minister’s statement, he referenced persons with disabilities at one point. I know that a working group was established in June of 2008 to deal with persons with disabilities to try to make things a little easier for them and to further their employment. I’d like to ask the Minister what work that working group did some 16, 18 months ago and how is that relevant to the review that he was referencing that will be done in six months’ time. Thank you.

We’ve been doing a number of things. First of all, we’ve looked at different jurisdictions that have been doing some groundbreaking work in this area. We invited the Yukon to come and describe what process they took to work in increasing the representation of people with disabilities in the workforce. We had a workshop. We have had our committees working together. We have put in place sensitivity training for senior managers. So we are looking at the process of establishing an area that would focus entirely on increasing the representation of disabled people in the workforce. As we speak, we are hiring more people. But as the Member knows, it’s a question of people self-identifying themselves and you can only self-identify yourself once. So right now we’re starting to see an increase and we’re continuing to do work in this area. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.