Bill Braden

Thanks for the information. Mr. Speaker, given the high profile, the seriousness, the significance of caribou in our economy and our lifestyle up here, can the Minister advise is there a solid communications strategy in place that will be distributing this information and helping to inform everybody of the results and the steps as they are developed, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, $800,000 was allocated by this Assembly for additional work to conduct surveys to confirm, determine, and keep a much closer eye on the trends and circumstances that are affecting the health of the herd so we can make better management decisions. I would like to ask the Minister if he can advise, have those surveys been undertaken yet and what indicators, if any so far, are the caribou counters bringing back to us in terms of the health and the status of the herds? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. In January of this year, along with many other territorial leaders and wildlife professionals and outfitters, I attended the most successful Caribou Summit in Inuvik hosted by the former Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. There was a strong sense of a need for urgent collective action in the face of substantially declining caribou herds in the NWT, the Yukon and Nunavut.

Mr. Speaker, caribou is an absolutely essential part of the lifestyle, economy and the livelihoods of people here in the NWT, all northerners who have come to rely on this remarkable natural...

Merci beaucoup, monsieur le president. One of the most frequent issues that I have raised in this House and had a little bit of an inventory done 50 times, Mr. Speaker, in the last eight years, has been the plight of injured workers. It’s not about those people whose injury or disability has been expeditiously handled by the WCB and the vast majority of cases have, indeed, been handled this way. Rather, my concern has been for those injured workers that have complex, unconventional injuries who have challenged the WCB for years. In their quest for justice, some of them have lost virtually...

Thank you for that information. Does it not seem a bit unusual, if I could continue to direct the question to Mr. Bell, that we are undertaking this mission, yes, at the very end of this Assembly and our senior official, Mr. Handley, I understand is going to be leading the delegation. He is not returning to this Assembly.

---Laughter

How is it, Mr. Chair, that this government wants to undertake this when the Minister quite rightly points out that this should only be the first of many delegations and building this market? It just seems quite unusual that we are putting this together under the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, there are a couple of things in here that should be celebrated, as Ms. Lee pointed out, when we see good work, even if it is the result of years of hard slogging. When the paperwork actually lands on the desk and we are given the chance to say yes to it and really have it mean something, then that is something that makes this job worthwhile.

Ms. Lee has highlighted the territorial dementia centre, a long sought after program. Madam Chair, I think just about all Members, members of the general public, the media, have all heard the stories of families that are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Most of the presenters expressed a view that while they would like to see the government introduce better means to address illegal and illicit activities in their communities, evicting people from their homes may, in fact, cause more social problems in communities.  There is also a question about how effectively SCAN legislation would address the issue it is designed to address.

In Yellowknife, Ben McDonald stated that “It seems like the act is designed as good politics but I don’t think it’s necessarily designed as good social policy or as good social development...

Mr. Speaker, what steps will the WCB be taking to address the relatively large caseload of longstanding chronically unresolved issues for injured workers? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am very pleased to stand here today and recognize my wife of almost 30 years now, Valerie;…

---Applause

…my mother of all my life, Esther; a great friend and teacher of many people across the North, Ed Jeske.

---Applause

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to recognize a constituent and leader in the arts community here in Yellowknife, Mr. Glen Abernethy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The offer that the Minister has made to sort of brief committee on the fly here on the floor in the dying days of this Assembly really falls short. It demonstrates a number of the things that we’ve talked about over and over in the life of this Assembly. I spoke to them this afternoon in my reply to the opening address; that communication issues have really dogged the relationship between just about every department or other and committee. I am sort of doubly frustrated here because at heart I am a tourism guy, Mr. Chairman, but I also have a responsibility to be a...