Mr. Chairman, I seek Committee of the Whole’s indulgence. Can we turn back to page 10-17, Education, Culture and Employment?

The Member is asking for consent to go back to page 10-17.

Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have a committee motion I would like to read in. I am going to distribute it.

Mr. Menicoche is making a motion. Go ahead.

The motion is in order. To the motion.

Question has been called.

---Carried

Page 10-17, Education, Culture and Employment, activity summary, operations expenditure summary, $181.532 million. Agreed?

Okay. We can go back to page 10-24, grants and contributions, advanced education, contributions, $32.271 million.

Page 10-25, active positions, advanced education, information item. Agreed?

We are moving on to page 10-27, income security, operations expenditure summary, activity summary. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again following up on my comments in my opening remarks and others spoke to the same issue. I have questions on the $400,000 that is going to establishing a coordination committee or a steering committee for nutritious foods across the NWT. This is the latest and, I believe, third morph into this incarnation in response to our repeated requests of Members for a milk subsidy or some sort of a direct program to nutritious food. The milk subsidy was focused very much on children, especially young children, and the department continues to dilute that into something meaningless, relatively meaningless and this time it sounds particularly bureaucratic, more so each time I see words. I’m wondering what the Minister really means with this $400,000 NWT Nutritious Foods Steering Committee. Thank you.

Minister of Education.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the $400,000 that’s been identified would cover a variety of, I guess, sectors or a committee to identify what’s important in the communities. I wouldn’t call this meaningless money. There’s $400,000 going to the communities. We want to spend the $400,000, the majority of it, probably 90 or 95 percent of it, in the schools, in the community, into the organizations’ hands so they can deliver a breakfast program or other nutritious program. We can’t call it meaningless, Mr. Chair.

I think it’s important to identify that we are working with the NWT Foods First Foundation as well as Health and Social Services, the Stats Bureau and ENR and other school boards as well are involved and medical and health care. So those are the organizations that are actively involved with the community, whether it be the breakfast program, the school programming or the community programming. So they’re the ones who will carry this on. So we want to give them the $400,000 because they’re the experts at the table. Mr. Chair, that was the $400,000 that’s been allocated for that. Mahsi.

Well good grief, Mr. Chair, we don’t need bureaucracy like this. Yeah, I could match the number of people on groups and agencies and so on the Minister listed that are working on this and beside which Health and Social Services, according to the departmental document publicly available, NWT nutrition and nutrition related programs and initiatives, the lead for NWT Nutrition Strategy is Health and Social Services. So, Mr. Chair, we want to see direct programs to support nutritious foods in a new and improved way and actually not even that, we just want to put good foods into the mouths of babes, as my colleague Ms. Bisaro put it.

So on that basis, Mr. Chair, I’m going to make a motion, if I may. Thank you.

Mr. Bromley, you’re moving a motion. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that $400,000 be deleted from the activity income security under the Department of Education, Culture and Employment Main Estimates 2010-2011, page 10-27, for the Nutritious Foods Steering Committee and its associated activities. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The motion is in order. Motion is being distributed. To the motion. Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair…(inaudible)…it’s been of great interest to us. When we start talking about the food basket and other areas of nutritious food delivery into the communities, to the schools, and this $400,000 was earmarked so we can identify what’s needed in the communities. As I stated earlier, Mr. Chair, the $400,000, the majority of it will be going to the community, it will be going to the organization so they can distribute it to the students that are without food or the breakfast program in the morning, because we did listen to the Assembly Members about no more studies. So we’re saying the $400,000 will go towards that particular food programming, the nutritious food. So, Mr. Chair, I just want to highlight that we can’t take the food away or the money away from those individuals that desperately need it and to work with it. I think it’s important to highlight that.

You know, we took the study part away. We were going to focus on, okay, what’s out there now, but the majority of the money will be going to the communities. So I just want to reiterate that for the general public that the $400,000, it is going to a good cause and we feel that it should still be part of our budgeting process. Mahsi, Mr. Chair.