Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to report to this Assembly that the Standing Committee on Governance and Economic Development has reviewed Bill 6, Workers’ Compensation Act, and wishes to report that Bill 6 is now ready for Committee of the Whole, as amended and reprinted. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thought the Minister was going to run the clock out. My question is for the Minister of Transportation. Mr. Speaker, I have written to the Minister and the deputy minister. I do thank the Minister that he took the time to attend in Hay River to look at some of the transportation infrastructure. As everyone knows, Hay River is the transportation hub of the North, and so our transportation infrastructure is very important to us, as it is to any community. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister what the plans are with respect to the deficiencies that have...

Mr. Speaker, I would hope that the Minister would treat this as a matter of some urgency and some importance. I think this shows great disrespect to our public servants if we do not do that. Mr. Speaker, I know that MLAs' information was included in there too, but I am not so concerned about that; I am concerned about the people in the public service who have had this information out there. I do not believe it was out there for a short period of time. I think it was out there for a three-week period. I would ask the Minister to check into that. I would be very interested in hearing back...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Human Resources. Mr. Speaker, as I said in my Member’s statement, members of the public service of the Government of the Northwest Territories are entitled and should expect that the information that they provide to their employer will be treated with respect and it will be kept private and used only for the purpose it is intended.

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, May 15, 2007, I asked Minister Dent if there had been a breach of security of information of a private nature for members of the public service through the PeopleSoft...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in recent years, governments have turned more and more to electronic databases to help them manage vast amounts of personal information used to carry out programs and services. In fact, just this week, the Minister of Health and Social Services announced a major partnership between the GNWT and Canada Health Infoway that will see all NWT communities participating in an electronic health records network within the next year.

Such announcements typically hail electronic databases as promising efficiencies and enhanced quality of services. What they fail to...

Question has been called. All those in favour of the motion? All those opposed? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Is committee agreed?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don’t know if we need a bridge, I don’t know if the Deh Cho Bridge is a priority of northerners. I suggest that we have some more consultation to ascertain the answer to those questions and I’m not sure if we’re not just jumping in because this Legislative Assembly is coming to a close. I don’t know what the panic is all of a sudden on the bridge, but I want to say I do support the Deh Cho Bridge myself because it’s good for Hay River and it’s close enough to Hay River that there’s going to be some economic activity for Hay River around the...

Thank you for that, Mr. Speaker, and thank you that Members will be kept informed, but what about the members of the public service whose information has been put out there? Their privacy has been violated; their privacy has been breached. So thank you for keeping Members of this House informed. What are we going to do to inform the members of the public service, whose information, their private information, their social insurance number, their bank account numbers, has been out there for a period of time, whether it was for two hours or three weeks or whatever it turns out to be? What...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I cannot believe that given the amount of electronic information that this government deals with, our very expensive money that we've invested in PeopleSoft software and programming, that, my goodness, there would be no protocol established for a breach of that system. The Minister says he's going to get to the bottom of that and he also says he's going to get to the bottom of what actually happened. You know, I'm not that assured by that, given the fact that for over a month those same people in that department couldn't even inform him that there had been a breach...