Brendan Bell was first elected to the 14th Legislative Assembly on December 6th, 1999. Born on August 17th, 1971 Brendan has lived in the NWT since 1980. He now lives in Yellowknife with his wife Jill and their daughter Emily.
Prior to his election to the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Bell was a business owner and also worked for a management-consulting firm in Yellowknife for several years. Brendan has Bachelor of Commerce and Masters in Business Administration degrees.
In the 14th Assembly Brendan was appointed Chair of Standing Committee on Social Programs, Chair of Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures, and Chair of Special Committee on Conflict Process. He also served as a member of both the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight and the Special Committee on the Review of the Official Languages Act.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let me say that no, I was not aware of a commitment made in that regard, if one was made. A little bit of history, Mr. Speaker. I think in the mid-90s there were 17 communities who had community freezers and I think some of them had more than more, but certainly not more than two. At that point, the government made a decision to get out of funding the O and M for these community freezers for a variety of reasons. Cost was one of them. Upkeep was another. When freezers fail, obviously the entire community's subsistence harvest can be lost, Mr. Speaker. So we...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Deh Cho, that Bill 12, Garnishment Remedies Statutes Amendment Act, be read for the third time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, let me say I agree with the Member that the urgency obviously with the weather turning colder is not as great as it was in the summer. We do believe that this is the model that makes sense, having people have their own chest freezers. The issue in Paulatuk where we have a large community freezer had the refrigeration unit go out on the equipment, much of the community subsistence harvest was lost is something that we don’t think makes sense anymore. We want to make sure that we hedge our bets and that everybody has a freezer, everybody who needs one. So we will work with the...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member has indicated, we have sent, I believe, 50 freezers to Ulukhaktok, 25 to Paulatuk, and obviously we have had some recent problems with the community freezer in Paulatuk. We are prepared to sit down and arrange for more freezers to come to the community, but we do need to talk to the HDC, the hunters and trappers. We need a request from the hunters and trappers. I understand the region is working with them now. We need to understand who the families are that are in need of freezers. We can’t determine that on our own so we do rely on the hunters and...
Debates of
, (day 14)
Thank you, Madam Chair. First let me again also have my thanks to Honourable Justice John Vertes, Eddie Erasmus and Rod O’Brien who put a lot of work into travelling and hearing from the people of the Northwest Territories and putting together this commission report. I think it was a very useful exercise.
As has been indicated here by a number of other Members, in hindsight maybe we should have sat down and talked about some more constraints on the commission in terms of limiting the number of seats and limiting the growth in government. I think that’s certainly something that we need to...
Mr. Speaker, I will have to check on that. It is my understanding that, in the past, we have used the barge schedule. We have needed some lead time to make sure that we could get the freezers ordered, on the barge and delivered to the community. I think the next opportunity is next summer to do that, but certainly let me see what is available in the region, Mr. Speaker, and I will get back to the Member. Thank you.
Debates of
, (day 13)
I am pleased to be here today to review Bill 12, Garnishment Remedies Statutes Amendment Act.
This bill amends the Creditors Relief Act, the Territorial Court Act and the Public Service Garnishee Act so that a garnishment order would continue to be in effect for up to one year or until the debt is paid, whichever comes first. The legislation also amends the Exemptions Act to increase the amount of wages that are exempt from garnishment.
Garnishment orders are used to collect debts that have been ordered paid by the court. The order is served on the person who owes the debtor money, usually the...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let me first indicate to the Member that certainly the community and this Member have convinced me of the need for a detachment in Sachs Harbour. One of the most pressing reasons is the distance for service from Inuvik. I was in Sachs Harbour, talked about my desire to see RCMP officers on the ground in the summer of 2007. We wouldn't have a permanent detachment by that point. We would have to send a detachment up in '08 in the summer season. So sometime in fall '08 the detachment could be operational.
Mr. Speaker, the federal government will come up with the...
Mr. Speaker, I think it’s best that we sit down with the community and talk about some options. Obviously the concern is after hours and we need to come up with some sort of 24-hour mechanism in order to do it in a cost-effective manner. We have looked at solutions like this translation service through the telephone. I am not sure that that would be adequate. It’s possible we can work with other departments and talk about the need maybe at the health centre. Potentially there is translation there that we could borrow. Mr. Speaker, I will say that this is a problem. We can’t go by the number...
