Wendy Bisaro

Just one final question. Is this job of establishing appeals committees now done?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I’d like to follow up on some of the questions and statements that I made in my statement.

I talked about a request for tender and that it does not allow for -- I didn’t mention this -- full-cost accounting of the service that is being sought. There is no opportunity for the buyer to do company reference checks, to consider the ability of the company’s staff in light of the work being contracted for. To get a full value of our money on such a contract, I believe we ought to be using a request...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to echo some of the comments that have already been made. I want to first talk about the income security reform that’s been mentioned. I think we talked about it the other day, but I see this as a great opportunity to do things cross-departmentally. I was pleased to hear the Minister mention the Anti-Poverty Strategy and that that’s kind of in his sights, I guess, as they look at income security.

I look at the description from the business plans and it says that the department administers a range of programs addressing cost of living issues, encouraging...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I will speak to the recently awarded GNWT medical travel contract. Apart from the slap in the face that our local travel companies received as the contract was moved south, the decision has had a negative effect on our economy. A local northern small business will close its doors and three employees will be left without a job.

Mr. Speaker, as a government, we should be doing everything we can to encourage and increase our economy, not reduce it. In all likelihood, Mr. Speaker, as a direct result of this contract award, the NWT government will be losing revenue...

That’s rather distressing if this foundation is not going to receive any further funding. The Food First Foundation has received rave reviews from our schools. They have been doing excellent education work in terms of teaching the kids about healthy foods, what they should be eating, what they should not be eating. They’ve been providing foods in the schools and I think they’ve also been providing some education to our staff, as well, to help them to continue with that sort of education and awareness.

To the Minister: what is the department going to do to replace that work that the Food First...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question -- I hope it belongs here -- with regard to bandwidth and provision for bandwidth within the department, at the schools and so on. My understanding is that ECE is working its way out of the GNWT IT system, in terms of provision of bandwidth anyway, and are going to be sort of having their own portal, for lack of a better way of describing it. I’d like to know where that project is at and what kind of cost is being incurred by the department for this kind of moving away from the total government IT. Thank you.

One last comment I want to make and I would hope that the department is considering this already. Since we are looking at an early childhood framework I would hope that there’s going to be a great deal of consultation with daycares, with child care centres. They vary from certified in-home daycares as well as ones that are in a separate building. I would certainly hope that the department is going to utilize the expertise within these various businesses and consult with them, I would hope, copiously. Thanks.

I’m pleased to hear that the revision is going to be part of the overall evaluation of student financial assistance.

One other result struck me as probably not the best. Table 5 in the report shows the results of student financial assistance service objectives. I was really surprised by the measurements used there. They asked whether or not appointments were met within 15 minutes of the appointment time, whether e-mail replies were received within two days of them being received, whether phone messages or voice messages were replied to within two days. I thought those were pretty lax...

I appreciate the answer. When I raised the concern, the major concern of daycares was that they were not funded on a per student basis in the way that we fund our schools but they were funded basically according to the formula that Mr. Daniels just explained. Their very real concern was when a child was not present in the daycare, they didn’t get funding. It had several ramifications. They have to keep fairly onerous notes and attendance records and submit them in order to get their funding, and the other problem is they don’t know from one week or one month to the next what their funding is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and I’d like to ask some questions about the student financial assistance client satisfaction survey that was held last year. The survey indicated that in general the student financial assistance staff are doing pretty well, but I was really struck by the answer to one question where 11 percent of the respondents were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the way staff explained their answers. I’d like to ask the Minister what action the department is taking to lower that percentage...