Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation and it has to do with the housing policy in the last six months or year or so. There were huge debates about this employee market housing policy where the Housing Corporation purchased 22 mobile homes to be placed in small communities in order to make this housing available to employees of government, whether they be teachers or nurses or other professionals. I’d like to know whether or not the corporation has done a review of that and where the Minister is with that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I'm on the verge of doing three to zero here. It is in line with this because of the fact that this whole money for renovations to allow for an explosive protection system and different conveyor belts to make sure that all the baggage could be X-rayed and stuff, that is the money that is being sought here. It is that renovation that is requiring the Department of Transportation to look at all of the configurations in order to fit everything in. I am encouraged to hear that the Minister and his department are having talks with the proprietors of the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question was what has the Minister done as a Minister to make sure that there is no perception or occurrence of anything wrong going on? I think he could explain that because it’s his department, it’s his employees…

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can assure you that Mr. Roland confirmed that figure, the lease price per square metre, in Committee of the Whole in the House last Friday.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don’t know what to pursue today, maybe I’ll just continue on with my Member’s statement. To the Minister of Justice, Mr. Speaker, on the issue surrounding low morale problems and high vacancy rate and high overtime and such, I see two problems there. One is that I don’t think there’s recognition on the part of the Minister, he’s never admitted or acknowledged that there is any kind of problem and the more he says that, the more our phone lines and our e-mails and everything is burning up because people are getting really, really frustrated. The second...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a final thought here. When you consider $266,000 approved in the last supplementary appropriation and $115,000 this time -- granted it’s capital budget -- one could only wonder what we could do with that kind of money if we were to give it to private lawyers to take on files. I used to have Legal Aid files when I used to practice and many cases are approved for $1,000, $1,500 and $2,000 for these sorts of cases. Most lawyers in town are willing to take on files at a real discounted rate. Actually, it’s way too low now for them, to the point where they’ve...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak again about the low morale at the North Slave Correctional Centre. Mr. Speaker, a veteran of 20 plus years at the correctional services contacted me over the weekend to tell me what so many others have told me already. That is that, in all this time at the North Slave Correction Centre, he can honestly say that he has never seen anything so bad in terms of low morale, sick leave abuse, forced overtime, problematic hiring practices, lack of support, inmate-staff confrontations, and assaults and micromanaging. Mr. Speaker, it also...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just for the record, I think it should be stated that the information Mr. Ramsay and I refer to in terms of the landlord agreeing to cover the majority of the cost comes from written information that we received from the Minister. We can’t really table those, I guess, but it’s stated clearly and I guess Minister Dent wasn’t made aware of that. But it has been provided to all the Members, this information that the landlord has agreed to pay a majority of the renovation costs because they feel that it is in line with what they had been planning for the mall where they see...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don’t believe I got information as to what other costs there might be. Is that something that is within his knowledge? Thank you.

Well, that is a lot of information. I appreciate that we went through this yesterday, but there were some remaining questions. We are still not clear exactly as to how it is the case that this budget for fuel and power has been underestimated by almost $1 million each year. For example, it says here that the Minister said that the department was aware that the new facility would cost more and that something like ventilation, it seems like the turnover had to be 13 times or whatever. This is not new science. I am sure there is an industry standard that they had to work with that would tell...