Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Minister mentioned a base adjustment to the programs and specifically the contractor who’s taking care of the Charlotte Vehus Home and the Billy Moore Assisted Living Group Home. Can he give me a percentage on the base adjustments of the overall contract and what were the possible final numbers or where I can find the final numbers in both contracts that were, I guess, admitted?

Thanks for the explanation. If Members recall, this was a big issue for me when I was dealing with it, but speaking to the contractor that lost the award, there was a stipulation in the contract that if he hadn’t spent certain dollars in areas that he had signed during the contract, he had to give money back to the authority and he was doing that. So now we’re basing our contracts based on a deficit. That doesn’t make any sense, and if he could give a little bit more explanation how we award contracts based on our authority’s deficit. Can I get just a bit more clarity on awarding contracts...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In terms of one of the biggest, I guess, advocates for this type of research is the Canadian Blood Services out of Alberta. I’m asking for another commitment here from the Minister.

Would the Minister contact their office and get information about awareness campaigns, education materials, and look at developing a more comprehensive plan focused on partnership with the Canadian Blood Services to deliver this comprehensive plan to the residents of the Northwest Territories?

I had asked the Minister about questions in terms of the awareness campaign. Up until last year when I went to the booth, I didn’t really know too much about it, and I did a lot of work in the health promotion area.

Once again, I’d like to ask the Minister if there are any programs that offer education and awareness in the Northwest Territories to the residents of the Northwest Territories that make them understand about the cheek swabs and getting into the database, and becoming a donor for the stem cell bone marrow transplant donor list.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a wonderful constituency assistant, Maia Lepage, who is also here chaperoning two of our Pages for the week. She is doing double duty this week.

At this time I would also like to recognize Mr. Ernie Bernhardt, who has been an ambassador, innovator and teacher of arctic sports throughout the circumpolar region of the world.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last summer I was very fortunate to attend a Relay for Life here in Yellowknife and I ended up walking for a bit there. While I was walking for the cause, I ended up upon this booth where we had some volunteers that were looking to sign up volunteers for donations of stem cell donors. I was very fortunate. I did the cheek swab and got my name into the database.

About a week later, it was very coincidental, but I ran into a nurse who had asked me if the NWT was doing anything in terms of stem cell research or stem cell donor campaigns, mainly because there was a young...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So the awarded contract to the Charlotte Vehus was $1.459 million and the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority was the authority running specific programs for the Charlotte Vehus Home, or was it Charlotte Vehus running those programs and Beaufort-Delta covered them up, and now that Beaufort-Delta is in debt because they were kind of supplementing the Charlotte Vehus Home when Charlotte… Can I just get that clarity?

Thank you. In regard to the Charlotte Vehus Home, that was Parkland services, I believe, that was running that program. For somebody to run that program for the amount of years that they have, you’d think that the contractor would bid his contracts based on previous years’ expenditures, and now they’re coming back to us for over half a million dollars. I can see maybe $100,000, but coming back for over half a million dollars to continue to run the same programs and services that they’ve done for years doesn’t make sense to me. Now we’re awarding them a contract where they’ve actually come back...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If anybody remembers, this was a big issue that we brought up when the contract was actually being awarded, and it went out for tender and we had two contractors come back with bids, and we had a northern contractor and a southern contractor. There was a lot of mix-up. The northern contractor initially won the bid, then he ended up losing out because of the Business Incentive Policy that the NWT promotes and somehow the southern contractor won this bid.

What we have before us now is that this southern contractor is coming back to this government and asking for an extra...

Obviously, there are organizations in the Northwest Territories who are giving this type of awareness campaign. Would the Minister and his department commit to supporting these organizations, finding out who these organizations are and supporting them either financially or through human resources to get this education out to people of the Northwest Territories, so that should one of our residents need this type of donor request, that it’s there for them? Will the Minister commit to offering that support?