Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am continuing my questioning where Ms. Bisaro left off because I, too, am a bit concerned with $1.2 million left. I, too, have been on that road and I can assure you, given the experience that I’ve had in this room looking at budgets for transportation and road costs, there is a heck of a lot more than $1.2 million left to do there.

My question is this: Is this project still on budget? I’ve asked that a couple of times, and I’ve always been reassured we’re on budget, we’re on budget, we’re on budget, so I’m going to ask again, are we on budget?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the Minister and I have a different definition of whole and comprehensive. If I was in pre-kindergarten, that would probably be applicable, what I received yesterday. That was not full and comprehensive.

In trying to reflect best practices that we see nationally, can the Minister indicate when we should expect a full, public reporting mechanism that reports all superbug incidents in our in-patient hospitals and a complete public reporting program that evaluates our NWT housekeeping programs? Thank you.

Again, I appreciate the Minister’s thorough response there. From what I gather, December 31, 2015, is going to be a critical time period for us, and I understand that, but I think for the betterment of trying to understand this project, because it has carried on almost the life of the 17th Assembly, where are we at in terms of spending today of the whole project, and what does that money represent in terms as a percent complete for that project, just so I can understand where we’re at with the project itself, both in dollars and as also percent complete.

The recently tabled NWT Department of Health and Social Services Annual Report of 2012-2013 lists Methicillin-resistant Staph showing a doubling of incidents in our hospitals in just one calendar year. Plus, a tabled data provided yesterday by the Minister equally echoes regional authorities struggling with huge reporting increases. So, unfortunately, with only one matrix of evaluation which is clearly showing alarming increases in certain regions, what is this Minister doing to mitigate this situation? Thank you.

I guess the question I have is with this delay in spending, have there been any other setbacks that we can anticipate as we prepare for, I guess, the budget plan coming up this fall? Did this delay of spending, I guess, cascade from a number of other events that maybe we’ll foresee here in the future?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

II.

Conduct a thorough review of the accountability framework

According to the Auditor General’s report, the current accountability framework leaves the director with little control over the day-to-day operations for which he is ultimately responsible under the act. While the director authorizes child protection workers to exercise many of his duties and make decisions on his behalf, these workers are employed by the regional authorities and report to managers who are not accountable either to the department or the director for child and family services delivered in...

Thank you, Madam Chair. My questions have to do with the electronic records and document management system. According to the revised budget that we originally passed back in March of last year, the budget for that whole amount of document management was about $341,000 if my math is correct, which means we only spent about $19,000 out of that amount, which is a paltry amount of money. Now we’ve carried this over again.

Can we get an explanation why very little of that money was actually spent and why we’re seeing it as a carry-over? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Volunteers in many organizations are valuable and appreciated assets who make our territory a safe and better place. So when lives are in danger, the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association, or CASARA for short, are such volunteers who are ready, willing and trained to work as spotters alongside our Royal Canadian Air Force, or military aircraft and ground vehicles. With roughly 80 members in Inuvik, Norman Wells, Hay River and Yellowknife, these CASARA NWT volunteers are nationally funded by the Department of National Defence and work in conjunction with 10 provinces...

Upon further analysis, it was evident that even the GNWT volunteer firefighters face similar hurdles when accessing special leave days to maintain their professional qualifications. This begs me to ask: how many other volunteer groups out there who contribute to the safety and security of our residents are affected with this inconsistent policy?

Can the Minister indicate to the House how he and his department will address this shortcoming? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I indicated in my Member’s statement we had an inconsistent application of our human resource five-day special leave provision for our civil air search and rescue and firefighter GNWT volunteers. More specifically, most of the required southern training for these volunteers occurs on weekends. So when these GNWT volunteers want to access special leave days for travel on a Friday and return on a Monday, they are denied by their supervisor. Currently, Mr. Speaker, that travel is not explicitly included in the five-day special leave, and it is within this...