Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have just a couple of questions here. The first one is coming out of the Government Operations report where committee had made a recommendation for stiffer penalties for bootleggers and drug dealers, and creating stiffer penalties such as seizure of vehicles and other materials related to any type of cases. I didn’t know whether to ask the question to this department, so I figured under this department would be the appropriate place. I just wanted to ask the Minister if there was any work that was done towards that or if there is any action going to be taken to these...

Mr. Speaker, going back to the report that was tabled in the House, I’m glad that the Minister did mention trying to keep money in the Northwest Territories. In the report it states that there is about $51 million that is not in the NWT contracts that this government goes into that does contracts for, and I know there are some services that can’t be provided here in the Northwest Territories to do some of these contracts; that goes down to training.

How is the Minister going to try to bring those numbers down, that $51 million that we go out of jurisdiction with contracts and keep that money...

In terms of educating our youth about high-risk behaviours, in the Northwest Territories sometimes we see the unfortunate incidents that result from that. I was very involved with a program called the Party Program, and I know they did it here in Yellowknife and I know they did it in Inuvik; I’m not sure what other communities there were. But it was very expensive and I know that the chief coroner at the time did some very strong presentations that were really effective in teaching youth and adults about high-risk behaviour, something that we always want to put forth. It was a very effective...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I have questions in regard to our procurement contract processes that we have. The Minister of ITI tabled a document in the House in our last sitting session. I just want to talk a bit about some of the concerns that are brought up from residents, especially the small businesses that can’t really out bid some of our bigger companies. I wanted to bring forth some of the concerns that they do have.

I would like to ask the Minister about sole-source contracting, not the process behind it but at what point is this government going to start looking at doing a better job...

Some of my initial research on death review committees shows that they’re very good in terms of the recommendations that are made and giving direction to government on what needs to be changed in terms of legislation or policies, or whether or not some type of action needs to be done in a small community. Obviously, there are incidents and cases where we’ve talked about policing in small communities and some of the small communities not having police officers, so that review committee might make a recommendation to include those things.

I’m looking at the number here for the coroner’s office...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The committee that’s been bringing these motions forward, once again, is in support of the work that government is doing. Some other dialogue and statistics that we get when we do have questions for the department, a lot of these motions we do bring forward are in response to some of the questions and answers that we hear within our dialogue during the business planning session. We’re working with our organizations throughout the Northwest Territories, so committee just wants to acknowledge that we’re listening, we’re hearing what people are saying and I just want to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Under legal aid services, I know the department has done a lot of really good work in bringing down the wait times for regional centres and here in Yellowknife when people are wanting to access legal aid. However, in the small communities, what we’re hearing is it’s a little longer than 60 days. As a result, I would like to read a motion.

I know the importance of home care in the community and I know I did break it down on average just to see what it was in places like Yellowknife and some of the smaller communities that have a lot of our elderly senior citizens who don’t want to leave home and want to live that independent lifestyle in their community. Those are where we see some of the higher per capita numbers, and I just want to make sure that we do have the services to support them.

Moving forward, I know I had some questions in the House, and it brought me on to seniors, which also deals with home care, but when I was...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Committee did some hard work going through the business planning session and I feel that bringing motions forward for recommendations that, as chair of the standing committee, I do stand behind the hard work of the committee members, the staff, and the departments that came and presented before us and gave us some of their concerns and issues as well.

As this is a recommendation, I will be supporting the motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just following up to some of the positions within the, I guess, authorities in general, we have in this part of the department here shared services. We did receive some concerns from some of the, I guess you could say, some of the computer divisions within the authority that there was a presentation given that would amalgamate all the local computer supports from across the Northwest Territories with the TSC, and although there was talk that no positions would be lost, especially full-time positions, the Department of Human Resources said otherwise. I’m just wondering...