Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also want to just weigh in on the issue here. We’re talking about a small sum of money versus a whole budget here and that these iPads will benefit, as Mr. Menicoche mentioned, the parents and families, so far that we can go into disciplining children in terms of how to use these iPads.
Branding has always been a marketing ploy of whatever company you have in this world. McDonald’s has a brand, Coca-Cola, you know, ever since I was growing up, Snap, Crackle and Pop, Rice Krispies. I still remember that, that’s a branding. Yes, it has always been in the industry, corporate world, you know, effective marketing, effective branding. Everybody does it. We just do it differently and it does have an effect. This new technology we’re into now, I see it no different than when technology was coming out in my school days and getting into it. Now we’ve advanced further and our children are more into it and they’re smart, these little ones. They can grab the iPad and just doodle on something, even set up my phone and things like that. They’re very, very smart, very keen. That started in the days of Thomas Edison, Einstein, Henry Ford. They all advance. That’s their God-given right. With the technology that we have, the advancement is more in the medical field, the science field, the environment field. All of these will move forward. For good or bad, it’s how we see it with our eyes. Henry didn’t make that judgment. I see that and Mr. Menicoche sees that this is an educational tool.
I heard a Member talk about technology in the world today. It’s good to have Facebook, that’s a real good tool, but it’s being used sometimes in not a good way. It’s scary. So the technology is there, it’s how will you use it and it seems like this is an educational tool we can use.
I also agree with Mr. Menicoche about big business. Big profit organizations have a corporate responsibility and this is a corporate responsibility. I see it as a good thing and you can take that interpretation however you want.. Imperial Oil just gave the students in Norman Wells new computers. They’ve been in Norman Wells over 90 years. One of their corporate responsibilities was the schools and they found out they were lacking computers, so they gave the schools a lot of new computers. So you interpret that how you want to interpret that, but the kids certainly enjoy those new computers and they’re making good use of them. How they use it, that’s up to their own integrity in how they do it, but for them, their families worked for Imperial, maybe, or their aunties and uncles work for Imperial. So
that’s the benefit of some of these large corporations coming to our communities.
Madam Chair, as Mr. Menicoche said, there are books, I’m sorry, Mr. Chair, you hear that Snap, Crackle and Pop, it’s because I’m happy here. Mr. Chair, there are many documents written by well-known academics that are smarter than us in psychology and that on the study of the effects of the world today. I certainly appreciate Mr. Bromley bringing some of these here to look at. I mean, there are many. So we have to look at all of them and see what those effects are, not to disregard but to look at some of these studies here. There are many of them out there.
I myself do not think we need to have a discussion about the policies of branding. I think we need to be fair about it and look at it, but there are some goods that we have received and we’re to look at the government, the taxpayers, do we increase our taxes so we can cover so we know the needs out there? They’re so great. Even on a motion that I’m still thinking about that, you know, we couldn’t increase the taxes because it’s costing us a lot of money.
So this branding issue here, I believe for me it’s common sense. Look at it. In Tulita and other small communities in the Sahtu, Husky has given our communities a breakfast program for our small kids. So I don’t think there’s any branding about it. It shows the people if you’re willing to work, they will provide you something, some benefits. So we have a breakfast program going from Husky Energy and that’s helping us. That’s a good thing. Husky also provided a couple hundred thousand dollars to the people in Tulita. They took 47 people out to build a moose skin boat. The government, there’s no money left, they’ve got no money for that. We asked them, can you help us train traditional skills on the land and construct a traditional boat? There might be other motivating factors from Husky, I don’t know, I haven’t gotten in their head, but 47 people who took advantage of that went up to the Keele River and built a moose skin boat. As a matter of fact, Mr. Premier went in that boat and he went for a boat ride.
But those are some of the things I wanted to say that corporate donation, responsibility, I don’t know what you call it, but it certainly helps us and helped the 47 people on the Keele River teach the traditional skills of boat building to our younger generation. So those same things are how you look at it. We could be settling for other things that are not quite so positive.
So I wanted to say, just going back to the tablets and these iPads, let’s not be too hasty in rushing, I mean, look at all things, are there alternative motives. I want to say I’m not very interested in them or having any discussion on the policies right now or in the future. It’s a big issue that we need to
look at and there are probably other examples out there for both sides. But I want to leave it at that.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, there’s really no questions to the Minister. Those are my comments as I see this issue.