Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to add a few comments to those and my thoughts are very similar to those of my colleague. This bill has been overdue for a very long time and I want to commend the Minister and the staff of his department for getting it done in short order. They’ve been working very hard to get this brought forward for this particular sitting.

There are many of our residents who are affected by mental health. There are many of our residents who don’t get the treatment they need because the current Mental Health Act is outdated and it will be totally replaced by this new act. I’m...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have some comments that I made the other night but would like to repeat them. At the outset, I want to say that this bill, not quite as long time in coming as Bill 37 but this one has been a long time in the works. I want to commend the work of the Minister to get out and speak to regional health authorities, speaking to regional Aboriginal governments and explain the concept that he was trying to put through and make sure that people really understood the concept before we got to this point of looking at a bill. I think that groundwork went a long way to what we found...

Thanks to the Minister for that fulsome response. I am somewhat dismayed. The Minister says that we are fully aware. Yes, I would say we may be fully aware of some of them through the media. I’m not sure that we’ve had full disclosure from Cabinet on some of those suggestions. Certainly we’re aware that there are projects that are in the works and we’ve been advised of those.

One of the other statements that the Minister made last week was “…infrastructure that will support the responsible development of the NWT and its economy.” When I read that, it said to me that we’re certainly narrowing...

To the Minister: That’s rather unfortunate. We have so many jobs in the GNWT which are unfilled, whether they’re hard to fill or whether they’re just “regular jobs,” so I fail to understand why the department wouldn’t want to hire as many people as possible, fill as many positions as possible, particularly in the North, but whether they be hard to fill or not.

One of the things that we have heard much about but have yet to see written on paper is the Population Strategy that this government is working towards bringing 2,000 bodies to the NWT to try and beef up our population.

I’d like to know...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions, as well, today are addressed to the Minister of Human Resources. I’d like to start off by asking him about an event that was held about two weeks ago, not that long ago. It was open houses that the Department of HR held in seven different communities across the NWT. I haven’t heard anything since they were held as to what sort of success there was from these open houses, what were the results of the initiative, so that’s my question to the Minister initially.

Were these open houses successful? Does he have any results that he can share with the House as to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today is Intergenerational Day and the day is being celebrated in over 100 cities across Canada, including Yellowknife. This is where younger and older people come together for intergenerational immersion. The goal is to create respectful relations and better understanding between children, youth and older persons. And it’s good to see so many active elders in the gallery today. Welcome to you all.

Since time immemorial there have been generational differences, but the speed of change and the technological impacts on society in the last 50 years has widened the gaps in...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have 18 seconds, so will fit another question in here. I appreciate the clarification on the funding, but we have just recently approved an operations budget in early March. We are now being asked to spend an additional $800,000.

Why was this expense not put into the operations budget which we approved just a few months ago? Why does it have to come forward as a supp? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to both Ministers. I hear that this money is going to be used for five new positions, and I can appreciate two things. I can appreciate that we’ve taken on greater responsibilities, and I can also appreciate that our communications have been seen to be lacking. I am certainly one of those who has suggested that we could do things a heck of a lot better. But I’m wondering where the decision that we needed five PYs has come from. Minister Miltenberger indicated that this money is going to be used to look at things and determine where to go. The Premier indicates...

Thanks to the Minister for the detail. I accept it at face value, but I just have to reiterate that it’s hard to know exactly how this is going to fit in with a strategy we haven’t seen yet. Thanks. That’s all I have, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the Minister. It’s difficult for me to feel comfortable in approving a fund, sorry, and to approve this funding in the absence of knowing exactly how it’s going to contribute to a plan that I haven’t seen yet. So, I appreciate that the Minister says that it’s coming, but it certainly would have been helpful if we had had that strategy before we had to approve these expenses.

I just want to say, in my limited experience with trying to get somebody through this Nominee Program, it’s not an easy process. It seems to be fraught with bureaucratic red tape and much of it, part of it is...