Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few general comments in regard to this operations expenditures supplementary appropriation. First off, I understand the amount of money that we’re putting into the special warrant for the extreme fire season that we did have. Speaking to some of my former colleagues in the industry, they mentioned that we’re going to see an even drier summer next year and maybe even a more extreme fire season, and want to know what the Minister and government is doing in terms of looking to address that issue. That being said, we can look at possibly another low water condition at the Snare Hydro System, which we, again, put $20 million towards, so that’s $67 million that this government didn’t budget for, but we’re taking the costs on that. Moving forward and looking at the change in weather and the amount of water and precipitation that we get, I just want to give a heads-up that we’re going to be seeing these kinds of costs in the future, I think, and how do we address those. What’s the department doing to put things in place to mitigate these costs and mitigate the damage that it’s doing to the environment and the Northwest Territories?

Like my colleague, the $20 million was communicated very, very poorly, and I understand that it was a timely matter, a decision matter, and it was done one day and an announcement was made the next. I mean, it could have possibly been held off over the weekend or something and information given to Members rather than the element of surprise that a lot of us experienced through the night, I guess, and hearing it the next day, but I’m sure there’s a lot of residents who are happy that the government took that approach to offset the high cost of living that we see in the Northwest Territories. I know residents of Inuvik were pretty happy that the government did step up to the plate. But it does come down to a communication issue with the Regular Members and how we pass information back and forth with Cabinet. We’ve heard a lot of discussion on those two big items.

The other item that’s on here is the amount of dollars that are being allocated for the implementation of Junior Kindergarten, which has been a big, hot topic this week in question period. With that, what I want to say is committee and some Members on this side of the House brought forward a motion back on February 27th , I think, to

try to get dollars for the implementation of Junior Kindergarten and that whole early childhood initiative. The Minister, actually all Ministers stood up in a recorded vote and defeated the motion, which just begs for me to say whether or not Cabinet does really take some of what we’re trying to do seriously. We read the full reports, we did our consultations with our constituents back home, with people that are going to be affected by Junior Kindergarten, and we did try to support the program. We tried to support not the delay of Junior Kindergarten but we wanted to make sure that it was implemented right, that everybody was in place to get it started. As you can see with the questions and Members’ statements this week, 23 communities have it implemented and actually now we’re having the government come back to committee saying, yes, we do need that money. Why didn’t they listen to us the first time?

We are trying to support, and I know that going forward I’ll support this supplementary appropriation because of the people that are going to be doing the programs. The kindergarten teachers are going to need that extra help and the schools are going to need extra help. In fact, we are putting Junior Kindergarten into communities that don’t even have the space and I think we’re going to be looking at another supplementary appropriation for renovations. They don’t even have bathroom facilities and we’re going to have to address those. It just concerns me that when we try to help out governments and we get a failed system and it’s not like, I told you so kind of attitude, but we knew it was going to come down. We knew that when the Junior Kindergarten was getting implemented that there was going to be dollars needed. You’re hearing that loud and clear now from the education authorities; you’re hearing it from the teachers; you’re hearing it from even the private daycares.

Not much else to say but we knew we were going to see some money here for that Junior Kindergarten program and it’s just disappointing that Cabinet actually stood up in a recorded vote and defeated a motion that we were trying to assist in a worthy program back in the February 27th motion, or the motion for the dollars that we were trying to allocate for the Junior Kindergarten. I can look it up if some of the Members want to see it. I just wanted to point that out there and get that on the record, because the Members on this side do listen and we do try to offer advice and support and try to get things implemented in a timely manner, but in a more efficient manner as well.

Just some opening comments to the operations.