Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. I will go to the chair of the Standing Committee on Social Programs, Mr. Moses, for any comments on the bill.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Before we go to that motion, I will thank the witnesses for their service this afternoon and ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the witnesses from the Chamber.

Committee, we have a motion on the floor. The motion is in order and the motion is non-debatable.

---Carried

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Abernethy.

Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that we want to provide the best service, but it’s not happening. The Minister referenced that the client service officers deal with their clients, they try to have a relationship with them and that’s all well and good, but in several instances now, I have had constituents tell me that their client service officer has changed and they have not been advised. They don’t know that that’s happened until they present their documents the next month for the next month’s payment, things get held up and somebody tells them oh, by the way, I’m not your client service...

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 spoke about the difficulties that one of my constituents had in getting an income support cheque for the month of October and the delay that occurred. He applied well in advance of the end of the month, and yet didn’t receive his income support cheque until the 15th of October.

I’d like to know from the Minister at the outset, delays appear periodically, I can accept that, but I’d like to know from the Minister what length of delay...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just like to explain why this is being done here. When committee went through the Legal Aid Act we did feel very strongly as a committee that we wanted to make sure that legal aid did cover matters of child protection. So we amended a different clause to add the words “child protection” in another clause elsewhere in the bill. At the time that the bill was being reprinted it was noticed that in this particular clause, Clause 10, there was a reference to family or civil matters but there was not a reference to child protection. So child protection is being added...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The debate that committee had and the work that committee did on this bill as a whole was really interesting. There were over 10 amendments made by committee to which the Minister, over time, concurred. We found middle ground on a couple of them, but, in general, there were some very good amendments that were made which made the act a better act.

This one particular amendment or change that was suggested at committee was hotly contested. We had quite a good debate around the whole issue. Committee was split; we could not agree. I think the opening remarks by the deputy...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I’m really glad to hear that hockey will be all together. I think that only makes sense.

My last question is a statement, I suppose, a comment to the Minister. I hope that he will keep the pressure on, and with the other sports Ministers that he’s already working with that he will keep the pressure on the Arctic Winter Games International Committee, and I would ask him if he could keep us up to date as things progress in the spring.

Thanks to the Minister for the information. I guess I would like to know, and I imagine many of the people who might hear this, our conversations in the House, would also like to know, what some of the options are that have been presented by these sports to give their kids, their athletes an opportunity for a major event in 2016.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I’m really glad to hear that training is going to be happening. I hope it’s ongoing. I would just suggest that the Minister consider mentoring as a training tool.

My last question to the Minister has to do with late fees. If an income support cheque is late and a client is paying late fees on, say, rent or a phone, are those late fees paid for by the department because it’s not the fault of the constituent? Thank you.