Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I can sign off on it as long as I ignored the wrath of the Minister of Finance, clearly because there would be some financial costs for us to make changes to the program. It is an issue that will have to be proposed as an initiative that would be considered as part of the budget process. The Member talked about not necessarily looking at other examples. What we are doing is trying to look for examples of how this has been done in other jurisdictions rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. So we agree that it is a good idea. We want to find ways to ensure...

Again, Mr. Speaker, I’m not sure where the Member is getting his misinformation, but Answerthink was asked on two specific occasions just before the go live date, "Are you confident that this system will run? Has it run in tests? Will it actually perform as it’s expected to run or should we wait until September?" On two separate occasions the Answerthink officials said, "No problem, this is going to work, we’ve run it in tests, we know that it works perfectly, we will see that it will run without any problems." So, Mr. Speaker, the question was put to the company. The contractor said that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In our opinion, the contract is not terminated until the product has been delivered. So I’m not sure where the Member is getting his information that the contract was terminated, because we have a contract for a product to be delivered. Until it’s delivered in a working fashion, the contract is not complete. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s hard to talk about a specific case without having all of the details. I will certainly commit to sit down with the Member this afternoon if possible to get the details and ensure that we have both the income support worker and, if necessary, the local housing authority work together to assess the situation this person might be in and see whether or not they’re getting all of the benefits that they were entitled to from this government. Thank you.

Good choice, Mr. Speaker. Thank you. Mr. Speaker, self-reliance is one of the core values of northerners and this government. It is an essential part of the vision of this Assembly. Northern people should have the tools and resources they need to function independently and to exercise self-determination.

In the summer of 2004, this government started planning for the redesign of income security programming in the Northwest Territories. Government staff undertook a review of all income security programs. They discovered that there are 17 programs in the government as a whole being delivered...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In fact, everybody did get a paycheque so there isn’t a situation where people haven’t been paid. In fact, everybody got a paycheque by the next banking day. That happened because of the work that people put in at the Department of Human Resources. I’m quite proud of the fact that people worked 23, 24 hours straight in order to ensure that the paycheques went out. Mr. Speaker, as I have said before, in our opinion, the reason that there was a problem stems back to the contractor. This government does not have the expertise to buy a program off the shelf and...

I appreciate that she stuck by that decision. But her jewellery store, the business she started, had to be sold after 18 years of being her baby. Our son, Tyler, has also paid a price for my public service. I have missed a lot of his activities over the years and haven’t been there on many occasions when he needed me.

So, Mr. Speaker, I owe a deep debt of gratitude not only to my constituents and colleagues here, but to my family who have supported me to do this job. That’s a debt that I could never adequately repay, but it's time that I started trying. So after waiting 27 years, Eileen has...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For four consecutive elections and nearly 16 years I've been honoured to be selected by the constituents of Frame Lake to represent them in this Legislative Assembly. To this day, I am awed to have had that level of trust. Mr. Speaker, I want to make it very clear that even though I've got 16 years under my belt, I have no intention of trying to win the record for the amount of time on replies to opening address.

---Applause

I don't like to be called the oldest Member of the Assembly, because by age that's not necessarily true. I prefer the term "Dean of the Assembly...

As I said, Mr. Speaker, I think it's because we are used to it that so many of us forget it. But when I talk to Members of provincial legislative assemblies, they are astounded to hear about the power of Regular Members. When I tell elected officials from other jurisdictions that when I was Regular Member I worked with other Members to get the government to make significant changes to budgets, like adding $1 million to a program that all Regular Members agreed should be a priority, they're incredulous. In a party system, that could never happen. Members would not be able to vote according...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this point, the policies between the public housing rental subsidy and the Income Support Program aren't the same. When ECE was given responsibility for public housing, the promise was that no changes would be made to those policies. If the intent of this policy is one to encourage attendance at school and continuation in education, there may be some grounds for us to take a look at whether or not we should adopt a similar policy under the Income Support Program. So that is something that, perhaps in this case, something that we can learn from the way the...