David Ramsay

That’s good. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess at the onset I’m very happy to see the government looking at biomass and the installation of wood pellet heating systems in GNWT facilities in both Hay River and Fort Smith and in other communities around the Northwest Territories. Just a couple of questions, though. I don’t know if the Minister has the answers for me today, but it takes a certain kind of distribution system, storage, you need a truck to deliver the wood pellets on a bigger scale like this. You can’t just buy bags of pellets at the hardware store and expect somebody to throw them in the hopper. I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister of Justice.

Would the Minister provide historic data on number of inmates on remand at North Slave Correctional Centre by month for the past five years, with the length of stay for each of those inmates on remand?

Why is there no day-to-day mental health services at North Slave Correctional Centre?

What happened to the other clinical psychologists that were employed at North Slave Correctional Centre?

Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I have been here for five years. I know we do a lot of work each and every day on prevention. I know that work happens. What I am suggesting is that I don’t think things are getting much better. What I would suggest to the Minister and the government is we need to take more of a policy look at what we are doing. And I agree with something that the Minister said: it starts early. I think we have done a disservice to our youth by allowing curriculum to be taken out where it pertains to physical activity. Children today in the classroom or in a school in the Northwest Territories don...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services. It gets back to my Member’s statement where I was talking about some research that has been conducted. It appeared in the Canadian Journal of Public Health in regards to chronic diseases and indicators that would suggest that the trend in northern Canada is not a good one, Mr. Speaker. We need to be doing more in the area of prevention. It is not too late to look at prevention. I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if her department is aware of the research that has been...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am just wondering about current plan holders under the NEBS Pension Plan that have pledged security. Are creditors going to be able to go after it once this legislation is passed? Are creditors going to be able to go after pension plan holders that have already pledged their plans as security? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Minister for that. For the procurement of those services, is it just going to be how we procure other services or is it going to go out to tender or is there only one in each community? I’m thinking it may be a business opportunity for people in both those communities to get into business. I’d like to see a competitive type of process take place. I’m just wondering if that will happen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll just wait until we get to the detail and ask the question on that page. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What is the Minister’s strategy for dealing with the lowering of the supp reserve to $10 million, given the fact that you’re going to let departments continually come back for more money? How are departments going to be kept in check so that the $15 million that was dispersed or is going to be dispersed again next year to the departments, how are we going to maintain that departments use that money for what they say they’re going to use it for and we’re not overspending our supp reserve by eight to 10 million dollars? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I know my colleague Mr. Abernethy was talking about departments and things that they could anticipate coming in the years I’ve been here, and years previous to that, my knowledge of collective bargaining with the UNW is something you can almost script. Every three years you’re going to have negotiations. You can go back and find out what you spent your money on three years ago and budget accordingly. I’m not sure why the $276,000 shows up via supplementary appropriation. I think it should be something the department budgets for every three years. They...