Sandy Lee

Thank you, Madam Chair. The committee held public hearings on Bill 5, An Act to Amend the Child and Family Services Act, in Yellowknife on April 20th and on May 14th; in Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik on April 23rd; in Ulukhaktok on April 24th; in Colville Lake on April 25th; and in Behchoko on April 26th, 2007. The committee would like to thank the Minister and all of the presenters for appearing before committee. The proposed amendments will provide for a prompt court hearing after the apprehension of a child, that is consistent with the rights of parents under the Canadian Charter of Rights and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. But the point is, businesses like this can never play on an even playing field. It doesn’t take into consideration the cost of doing business for the northern businesses here.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I feel like we had this discussion before when we were talking about constructing the jail where there are lots of benefits to having business being done in the North than just going for cost-efficiency. There is a lot of economies of scale that are going to be lost because there are so many more benefits having these businesses operate out of here that multinational corporations cannot provide. I am losing my question here. Mr. Speaker, Northstar’s position is the cost of operating is so high here that even with the business incentive…Okay, let me just ask a question...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask another set of questions to the Minister of Human Resources with regard to Northstar losing the EAP contract they have had for seven years. Mr. Speaker, there are such differences in facts about this case between the government and Northstar. Northstar says they were never advised about this inverse ratio calculation. The government says they were, that it was included in the RFP. The government says there was only one name that was added inadvertently, but Northstar states that there are at least three people they know of who were...

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.

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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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to join the colleagues here and second this very important motion. Mr. Speaker, I speak not only as a Member of this Legislature, but also as someone who has experienced the negative effects of alcohol abuse and what that can do to a family, and also as someone who has supported someone to a very successful road to recovery from alcoholism. Also, I speak as somebody who, like the Member for Hay River South and everyone else here, has suffered from the negative impacts of alcohol on our people.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is useful to show that we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Minister is doing something that this government gets criticized for, which is that people out there don’t see that this government is taking this issue seriously or that there is a clear, precise and simple, or easy to understand message about what we are doing that will tie together all of the enforcement activities…