Bill Braden

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Sahtu, that Committee Report 6-15(5) be received by the Assembly and moved into Committee of the Whole. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon I have two written questions. One is for the Minister responsible for the Workers' Compensation Board.

Mr. Speaker, Environment Canada recently pointed out to the Joint Review Panel that there is indeed a regulatory gap for the jurisdiction and the management of the project on these lands. Is the Minister’s department or some agency of the GNWT actively working this file with municipal, aboriginal and federal agencies to close this regulatory gap, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for Mr. McLeod, the Minister of the Environment, related to our regulatory regime for environmental management, Mr. Speaker. As we well know, mega development means mega consequences. Just look at Alberta and its tar sands. I believe they are the single largest contributor to greenhouse gasses in the country. Here in the NWT, we are on the cusp of something of a similar size. The government can do many things when it comes to environmental management. One of them is having a sound process to make sure that everybody plays by the...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Unchecked global warming will devastate the global economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, according to a major British report released today that seeks to quantify the costs and benefits of action as well as inaction. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said of the report, it is not in doubt that if the science is right that consequences for our planet are literally disastrous. This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime. Unless we act now, these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be...

Madam Chair. The circumstance that injured workers can find themselves in if they have been through, I guess, the standard cycle of reviews and appeals before the WCB, is that they will find themselves without the resources or the ability to call on legal or medical help to help them advance their case. That is of course with the exception, Madam Chair, of having access to the NWT’s legal aid system. We now are chronically under-resourced and understaffed in the legal aid area, Madam Chair, and so that means that an injured worker who may have very few or no alternatives other than to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. If there is one real tangible result that can come from this, it is that those workers…Madam Chair, I know that the Auditor General considered about 40 files of injured workers and just about all of them had longstanding cases that they were trying to get resolved. If we can do one tangible thing, it would be to see some kind of mechanism whereby they may see some resolution and some closure to their claim or to their case.

Madam Chair, it is well understood here that not all workers are going to get everything they think should be coming to them. The WCB does have a...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am very pleased to speak to the report, the work of my colleagues, the work of the Auditor General of Canada and her staff in accepting our request and, of course, the many workers who assisted in bringing to our attention their situation and the remedies that we should be looking at to make for a better WCB.

Madam Chair, my primary interest, as an MLA, is to give voice to my constituents and, in this case, to the many workers who have approached me over the past few years with their stories. Madam Chair, we have a picture of an organization that, for the most part...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Some brief comments and a question. Of course, I am speaking here as a proponent of the bill. It’s one of the larger ones to come before this Assembly so far, Madam Chair, at about 360 clauses.

I guess one very general observation I would make about this kind of legislation, Madam Chair, is elections are one of the very significant cornerstones of democracy and of the faith and the trust that our constituents have in how they choose their representatives. It’s not something that should ever be taken for granted. That is a very strong and compelling reason for this...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Mr. Lafferty. What we heard - committee's general comments to the report, Mr. Speaker.

The focus of our second annual pre-budget consultations was the cost of living. The high cost of living was one of the concerns we heard about the most during our 2005 hearings. It includes the cost of essentials such as housing, food, childcare, electricity, and fuel.

The GNWT already spends about $128 million, or roughly 13 percent of its total budget, on subsidies to help reduce the cost of living, including public housing, income assistance, and fuel and power...