Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Chair and my colleagues. I appreciate the opportunity to make a few brief remarks.

I think it’s important that we recognize the committee felt very strongly that the Health Information Act is a very necessary piece of legislation in the era of electronic medical records. Because of the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s very strong recommendation that we needed this kind of legislation to cover privacy around health records, the committee felt it was important to bring this motion forward, and I just wanted to emphasize the importance of this. We have heard previously from...

Mr. Chair, committee would like to consider Bill 11, Bill 20 and, time permitting, Committee Report 3-17(4).

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Premier, I understand that Cabinet and the government sees this as a top-up, but it’s obvious that the NGOs need more funding. A request for over a million dollars from all NGOs who applied last year is certainly an indication that $350,000 is not enough.

The Premier has heard many suggestions and ideas here today, and I believe would hear a great many suggestions on how to change the criteria for this fund from NGOs and for making improvements to the fund.

I’d like to ask the Premier and the Minister of the Executive if he will commit to a thorough consultative...

Thanks to the Minister for that response. I have to agree that those changes were positive. They definitely allowed the staff to process applications much faster than the previous year, and awards came within months of the start of the fiscal year, not near the end of the fiscal year as was happening previously.

In spite of this large improvement, I’d like to know from the Minister what the rationale is for the criteria within the NGO Stabilization Fund which puts new projects above projects from a previous year. I have to ask the Minister how that helps to stabilize an organization.

Mr. Chair, I move that we report progress.

---Carried

The last concern for today is the lack of financial assistance for emerging NGOs, those NGOs who are developing valuable civil society and volunteer bases. These new guys on the block do not currently receive GNWT funds and so they do not qualify for any of the dollars in the NGO Stabilization Fund. A separate fund is needed to assist these emerging NGOs as they get started and find their feet.

The NGO Stabilization Fund has been a welcome addition to the financial assistance given by the GNWT to NGOs providing important services for NWT residents on behalf of this government. It’s an...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement. I mentioned in my Member’s statement that a possible option to assist with the teachers’ housing is to change the regulations to allow education authorities to own property. So I’d like to know from the Minister why the department has not considered that as an option to date and why it’s not allowed for district education councils and authorities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move we report progress.

---Carried

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As pointed out in a recent report from the Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association, teachers are turning down job offers for small NWT communities because of a lack of adequate housing. The report goes on to say that in the past 11 years, the Department of Education has spent $13.9 million moving teachers out of these communities, and that doesn’t include the added cost of recruiting new teachers to replace those who have left.

Since 1996, when the GNWT got out of providing teacher housing, there have been many things tried but, unfortunately, most of these solutions...

Mr. Chair, thanks to Mr. Aumond for that. I have to ask the same question I asked with regard to the financial shared services. We are spending money here, nearly not as much money, but we are spending a bit of money here. Do we have expectations that we are going to have savings through the centralization? I think the Minister alluded to it a little bit, but are we going to basically… If we are spending $165,000, are we going to gain much more than that by having these services centralized? Thank you.