David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize all the visitors in the gallery today. I, too, would like to join my colleague Mr. Abernethy in welcoming Mr. Blake Lyons, a former colleague at Yellowknife City Council and mentor of mine when I was a much younger man. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Maybe I could get the Minister to make reservations for dinner for him and I sometime. I’ve got a number of things that immediately come to mind when we’re talking about health and social services and ways that things could be improved upon. I would never say that we should be pulling millions of dollars out of the system. My belief is we have to be putting more money into the system. We have to be budgeting accordingly. That I believe fully in.

I also believe, like my colleagues, that I would stack our system up against any system in the country. That’s not really the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to follow up on my colleague Ms. Bisaro’s questions. Again, we have a supplementary appropriation before the House where we continue to pour money into an issue and a situation that we know exists. We‘ve been talking about this for I don’t know how long. The program review office was to have a look at it, review it. We need to get a handle on this medical travel issue and if we’re not funding it appropriately, then we’ve got to tell ourselves that and start finding the money to fund it appropriately.

I agree with Ms. Bisaro; there’s no accountability when...

To my knowledge, I sat through the business planning process that we just had, and I know the main estimates will come before the House in February, but to my recollection, we didn’t have a discussion on establishing these five new positions, but I might be mistaken. Maybe if I could get that clarified by the Minister. Was that part of the discussions during our deliberations of the Housing Corporation’s business plans? Because I don’t recall seeing the five new positions for the administration of the PHRS in those plans. I might be mistaken. My memory might be failing me, but I don’t recall...

The money that would appear here for the establishment of those five positions, if you divide that by five it’s about $43,000, $44,000. I’m just wondering why it’s not more money if you’re establishing five positions. It should be much more than...probably twice as much as what appears here. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Monday, November 1, 2010, I’ll move the following motion: Now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Weledeh, that Tabled Document 103-16(5), Government of the Northwest Territories Contracts Over $5,000 Report, Year-to-Date of the Fiscal Year Ending March 31, 2010, be referred to Committee of the Whole for consideration.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to be speaking in favour of the motion as well.

If you look at the money and the amount of housing units that the Government of the Northwest Territories has put on the ground in our communities over the last five years, you would expect that there would be a decrease in the core need in our communities. There isn’t. Also, I’ve travelled to a number of small communities and the number one issue facing residents in the small communities is housing.

I want to support my colleagues on putting this motion forward. I believe that people should be given an...

Ultimately the government did make the right decision and listened to the Regular Members of this House and listened to the public across the Northwest Territories who suggested that it was the wrong decision. I’m glad that they did eventually listen.

I’d like to ask the Minister, I know that he’s privy to the discussions on the 11 or 12 positions that were needed at ECE to administer the program. Even though it doesn’t fall under the mandate of the Housing Corporation, I know he’s been involved in discussions with his counterpart in ECE on those positions and what the status is of the HR plan...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of the Housing Corporation. Getting back to my Member’s statement, obviously the decision of the last government to transfer responsibility for social housing was a decision of the last government, Mr. Speaker. For however long I think about this, I’ll never ever comprehend or understand why that decision was made in the first place, but I want to get back to something else I spoke about in my statement. That is responsibility.

This government was elected in 2007 and it took them over two years to reverse that decision. One of the first...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to join my colleagues today in talking about housing.

Having been a Member of this House for the past several years, I must say I’ve been witness to some very bad and costly decisions that governments have made over the years. One of the most ridiculous and bizarre moves came when the last government decided to transfer responsibility for social policy and the $34 million to administer it from the Housing Corporation to ECE. The fact is, Regular Members in the last government told the government not to do it, but it didn’t matter because, Mr. Speaker, a funny...