Sandy Lee

Mr. Speaker, there are lots of problems with this contract, but let me just focus on this name that was added. Mr. Speaker, just to put it simply, because it is quite complicated, this could be akin to McDonald’s bidding for a contract to supply Winter Games 2010 and they use a competitor as a subcontractor that they will replace wrongly in a real intentional fraudulent manner, I may add. Mr. Speaker, if the subcontractor is not important, then why did the contract ask for names of subcontractors? What was the reason for asking for that subcontractor’s name? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the outcome that we all expect is very clear. We would settle for nothing less than wage parity and fair and equitable benefits for these valuable employees. The only way to do this is for the government to put more funding to settle the package. Unless the government does this as soon as possible, we can expect a very long and hot summer. These employees can be expected to see all of us YK MLAs right by the workers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a last follow-up and it has to do with the potential additional work being placed on child protection workers. While there's mention of a social worker who came to talk to us, we've had occasions to meet and talk to other government workers, some of them being child protection workers, during our public hearings. It was obvious to us that they're not fully aware of these amendments. In one way, I could understand that because the government workers would be advised of the change to process once it's in place and they may not be advised of it at the front end....

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just briefly, something that's not mentioned in this report as I'm presenting this is the fact that we do recognize the important and difficult work that the child protection workers do, and we do, just in case there is any sense out there from hearing our report that we are only pointing out perhaps the problem areas, it's probably due to the fact that our committee hearing process, in our process we are just reporting what we heard in our public hearing process. But I do understand that there are children in our communities that find themselves in a position where...

Did the government look at the added benefit of keeping such a northern business here as a cost of rendering the contract? If there was some amount of money set aside, why didn’t they enter into a negotiated contract to keep the infrastructure in place instead of bringing up all…

…thank you.

Well, I guess it’s a case of he said/she said now, because he’s going by what the department is telling him and I am telling you, Mr. Speaker, from the perspective of Northstar, the government has to recognize that it costs more to run a business here. The counsellors for Northstar are paid more. They have their offices here. This other business could run a counselling service over the phone and keep all their administrative structure down south giving them an advantage. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister, is he not concerned about the fact of Northstar not having this contract and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Minister can correct me if I am wrong, but I am assuming that the reason why there was a requirement for northern contractors was so that there is northern content in this contract. The fact is we have no way of knowing, other than this very clear case, that there were not any other names added to put weight behind this contract. How could the Minister assure us that there were no other names included in there to give weight to this northern contract in a not transparent way? It puts a doubt to the entire process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. Is this a top up to the existing budget or are we allocating a budget to something that has been done without a budget?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to ask questions to the Minister of Human Resources and it’s in regards to the Minister’s statement he made yesterday about the summer student employment. Mr. Speaker, the Minister stated that in 2006 the GNWT provided employment to 343 summer students, and as of this week 195 students have been hired. I want to ask the Minister whether or not the number of student employment positions available has been reduced this year, because on the streets parents and university students are suggesting that government is not hiring as many summer students. A...