Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week, as Members know, I attended a celebration for Elizabeth Greenland who had her 95th birthday. It dawned on me at the event, when I looked around the Ingamo Hall and saw all the elders who were in attendance and the long-term care facility staff that brought all the elders from the hospital to celebrate in these celebrations – and many of them participated in the dancing and the feast – they had looks of joy on their faces, happiness, and they looked alive.

As we stand up here today on Pink Shirt Day, what dawned on me on that day was it was great to have a lot...

I’m glad to hear that the Minister of Human Resources, who is undertaking this Safe Disclosure Act, is in fact also hearing from employees that there are some issues around health and safety in other areas that have been identified. That means there is a stronger need or a stronger support for employees.

As the Minister responsible for Human Resources, would he make a commitment to do a campaign where our Minister of Human Resources affirms to our employees that he’s behind them, to speak up and get some of these issues drawn out on the table, either in an awareness campaign on the radio or in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions today for the Minister of Human Resources. I mentioned earlier, in terms of the due date of a report, it needs to be coupled with a whistleblower protection act of some sort. I know we did have the agreement on the Safe Disclosure Act and I know the department was working on creating legislation.

I want to ask the Minister of Human Resources, where are we on that legislation and when can we expect to see that legislation introduced to the House? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Canadian Association of Retired Persons, also known as CARP, has a comprehensive strategy to eradicate elder abuse, and one of the recommendations that they do give – and this one I thought was quite interesting – is to create an elder abuse hotline. Because we don’t have all the services and resources in the small communities especially, and I always like to refer that we have eight communities that don’t even have nurses, who are they going to speak to report this elder abuse? If we had a 1-800 hotline that could be widely known across the North with the capacity to redirect to local...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll follow up with my questions on elder abuse to the Minister of Health and Social Services. According to Stats Canada, seven out of 10 crimes against elders are never reported. There are many reasons, and we’ve had those discussions previously. One suggestion that I’ve brought up in the past is a duty to report and possibly create legislation for duty to report. When you look at the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, they make a recommendation that they can have a duty to report legislation or policy but it must be coupled with a whistleblower protection act...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m glad to hear that that database does exist and now we’ve increased it by about 600 new emergency firefighters and that we’re still looking at starting that training early on in the season.

It was mentioned earlier about compensation for equipment lost to hunters and trappers, or even property, cabins. I’m not sure how many cabins or property were damaged during the last fire season, but rather than looking at increasing that budget and providing compensation to those that live on the land or those that keep their equipment on the land for hunting and trapping I think...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The first question I have for the Minister and department is just in terms of the fire suppression budget. The actuals in 2013-14 were about $20 million, and the revised for last year was $54 million. In a news article that was in one of last week’s papers, the Minister said that funding for the wildland fire management is based on a 10-year average of suppression expenses. With these numbers that are in place, especially with the revised estimates coming in this year, you would think the budget for the ’15-16 year would be increased if he’s, in fact, going by the 10-year...

Thank you. I know I’ve asked questions in the House at one time or another about the need to invest more into our traditional economy and into our harvesters throughout the Northwest Territories, especially up in some of the regions where we did have some development going on and possibly some work that has been going on in terms of having some of the animals migrate in different routes than they used to. In some cases our hunters and trappers have to travel further now to get either fur or to get the animals that they’re hunting. That needs to be addressed.

We do forced growth in a lot of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table a couple of news reports here. The first one is from Northern Journal, October 27, 2014, and it’s entitled “Cultural resurgence at core of the Dechinta studies – all women cohort attends fall semester out on the land.”

The second one is from the Globe and Mail, entitled “Learning from the land in the North,” and it’s referencing the work that Dechinta University has done as well.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned, 90 percent of the alumni go into the NWT labour force. I made a comment yesterday about the NWT Labour Force Framework.

Will the Minister work with Dechinta University and work with our alumni to get them into the labour force within the Northwest Territories as well as create jobs in our small communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.