Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I had said in a response earlier in this House to Mrs. Groenewegen, that there are some outstanding invoices with Answerthink and I have provided direction to the department that they not be paid until we are satisfied that we have a working system. So I can’t tell you what specific invoices they are, but I do know that there is a substantial amount and we will wait and see what happens over the next few weeks in terms of getting the system up and running. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure that it would be appropriate or correct to say that the contract was terminated. We have a contract with Answerthink for them to deliver a product and, as I’ve said previously in this House, we’re not satisfied yet that the product has been delivered in the state which we were told it would be delivered. So at this point, we’re not convinced that the contract has been completed, Mr. Speaker. We are expecting a team from Answerthink to be here next week, six people apparently, to work at resolving issues. Mr. Speaker, we think it would have been more...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As rents are changed by local housing authorities, that should have no significant impact on the amount of money that it costs a family to live in that house if they are in financial need, because the amount of subsidy that is provided through the Income Support Program or through the public housing rental subsidy will change according to the family’s assessment. So as rents change, the subsidies might change as well so that there’s an offset. We would hope that that would allow the sort of phase-in that the Member is talking about.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, because that relates to a previous government, I can’t answer that question. As the Member is quite aware, in our system of government it is the Minister that is responsible for decisions that are made by their departments. Therefore, the Minister, if the question had come up in this House at the time, then that Minister could have been held responsible. But we have a situation where…It’s like in Ottawa when we have the Liberals in power, they blame the party that was there first; when the Conservatives come in, they blame the Liberals. Well, it’s the same...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The issue of the cost of the PeopleSoft program shouldn’t be a surprise to the Member. If you look at the Grant Thornton report which was done in the year 2000, it predicted that the annual cost for PeopleSoft would be about $1.8 million including licensing, software support, hardware acquisition and so on. So there is an ongoing cost to having any program that the government runs, because it has to continually update that and pay for its support and licensing.

Mr. Speaker, it is also important for me to state that the programs, all of the modules that are used right...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member is aware, it is the Housing Corporation that sets the rents for units in the North. Education, Culture and Employment calculates what subsidy a family might qualify for. That rent is then taken into account. We can certainly sit down with our partners at the Housing Corporation, as I said earlier, to make sure that we are available to work with members of the community to ensure that they are aware of all the programs. The Housing Corporation has a number of programs that are geared to income to help people get into better housing situations. We are...

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...

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.

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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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's my understanding that it's a matter of policy and not constitutional protection that has exempted some payments from consideration under the Income Support Program. So every government of Canada can make their own decisions about what is exempt and what isn't exempt for consideration when deciding whether or not to provide income support.