Bob Bromley

I don’t have any desire to go on about this. I think it’s a very straightforward issue, and it’s been noted annually at budget time for a number of years. I know probably all Members have heard from our non-government organizations and the difficulties they have in meeting forced growth when they’re expected to deliver often essential government services without the resources to maintain their capacity, and at the same time, of course, they see government departments very substantially increasing their budgets for forced growth reasons. I think we need to start recognizing that they live in...

I will leave it at that, I know the Minister is alert to the issue. I will just mention that I did have a colleague do the calculation for adults, and the cost of adults in our system is about $130,000 per person per year, so again a wellness course that is successful for three people would more than pay back, theoretically, the costs that we are proposing to invest, a very modest cost this year. I think the potential is substantially more than that, though I don’t know what is being contemplated for the pilot project, but the opportunities are huge. Just a comment again. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Of course, that’s not the way it was a few months ago. That was the recent change with the federal government and it seems like we’re choosing to emulate the federal government here. The Premier is on the record, probably hundreds of times, saying we want an efficient and effective regulatory system. I note that he rarely mentions a fair system or an objective system, but I will assume that he would agree that fairness and independence are key.

How does the Premier propose to reverse these power grabs and put land and water decision-making and resource management...

I know we went through a review not so long ago and emphasized the importance of the court workers and their multilingual status, so I think they do play an important role.

Are there issues about filling these positions generally or is this perhaps there’s just a higher turnover in court workers?

Thanks for that information and I’m glad there’s some flexibility there. I think we do want to take advantage of those opportunities when we can.

With respect to grants and contributions, I see one of the items here is YWCA of Yellowknife. They are provided funding as their role as designate under the Protection Against Family Violence Act. This is sort of representative. I see the budget hasn’t changed and I have brought this up a number of times and I know a number of people have. It is a serious concern of the Standing Committee on Social Programs. To that end, Mr. Chair, I would like to...

I’m still confused about how people are identified with FASD then.

I hope the Premier is satisfied that we have devolution, that we’re talking about implementing it here, so I won’t bother to respond to that.

Intentional or not, this power shift away from public boards is happening.

Where did the Premier and Cabinet get the mandate to set things in motion this way? Did this Assembly ask them to shift power away from public boards? Did our Aboriginal partners ask them to shift power to behind the closed doors of GNWT?

I’m going to leave it at that and I certainly will talk to committee and see if there is interest to take the Minister up on his offer to do a briefing and discussion on our legal aid work.

Thanks to the Minister for that response. I want to, first of all, thank all our staff for doing the good work they’re doing. I know this is a huge undertaking. I’m not intending to slight the staff or the efforts put out there at all in my questioning here.

In the Minister’s response, I did not hear any clarification that these are ATIPP positions are not. I would still appreciate some more detailed information on these positions that would help inform me with respect to this question.

With respect to the $11 million excess so far, the cushion that we have, I would urge the Minister to move...

I’ll just note our youth facilities are costing slightly over $5 million a year, so with respect to the wellness court, it would take roughly success with one-third of a youth to make payback right away. Clearly, with these sorts of numbers and the costs that we’re talking about, a wellness court is a no-brainer in terms of investment. I’m sure the Minister knows that, but I just think it’s clear enough that it needs to be underscored here and the Minister needs to put all efforts to expedite this wellness court which has taken us so many years to get going. That was a comment. I haven’t done...