Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Transportation and I’d like to thank both the Minister of Transportation and Finance for the package of information on the Deh Cho Bridge that we received the other day. It was comprehensive and there was a lot of information in there, which Members have been asking for.

I spoke about the bridge last week and in my statement I asked for two things. I asked for an analysis of the costs, how they were accumulated from inception until now, and I also asked for protocols for the future. My first question to the Minister is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Early this month the Minister of Health and Social Services made a statement about the 2010 Drop the Pop program in effect for this month of February. Since it’s Education Week and Drop the Pop Month, I thought I would see what Yellowknife schools registered for the program are doing and highlight some of their activities.

I mentioned a few days ago that we have a great bunch of teachers in the NWT. Their creativity and that of our students is evident in the events that YK schools are holding to emphasize the importance of dropping the pop. Here’s a summary of what some...

I appreciate the indulgence of the House. I was so excited to have a visitor in the audience earlier that I forgot to thank my Page. I would like to express my appreciation for Mikelle Wile who’s been here serving with us for the last several weeks. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for that clarification. So I guess I have to then ask, this is a P3 project, you know, the cost for the project is now $181-some-million, but is it normal that in a P3 project that the public partner is going to encounter and endure and have to undertake extra costs over and above the actual cost of the project? Thank you.

Thank you. That goes to my point, when I call them “hidden costs” I was not impugning that anyone was hiding anything, but these are costs which are not all that easy to itemize. The two PYs, yes, they’re obvious, but then there are many other bits and pieces of costs in various departments and that’s what I’m talking about. I’d like to know if the Minister can tell me approximately what kinds of costs the GNWT is incurring for staff time that’s been spent on this project, and that would be from after October 2007 election until now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my pleasure today to recognize Wendy Wile, as well. I can’t see her up there, but I know she’s up there. She’s a resident of Frame Lake and a neighbour just down the road from me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to report to the Assembly that the Standing Committee on Social Programs has reviewed Bill 3, Medical Profession Act, and committee wishes to report that Bill 3 is now ready for consideration in Committee of the Whole as amended and reprinted. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question that applies to all of these increases. The briefing note explains that there was no increase for fuel in this current year’s budget for all of these departments. My question to the Minister, I guess, is that it sounds as though we have adjusted our amounts going forward, future years, sounds as though we are planning to budget enough dollars to cover what we expect to incur in fuel costs. I guess my question would be: is that correct? Are we now stabilized going forward with this additional funding for fuel? Have we added enough money in our 2010-11...

Then to the Minister: if these are observations, then I am a little bit concerned. These three things are prefaced by a statement which says there are a number of things we need to change about uninsured health benefits. That doesn’t sound much like an observation to me. If the Minister feels that these are observations and if these are, indeed, observations, I’d like to ask the Minister, is there an opportunity during the consultation process, which is going to go on or is going on and has just started, is there an opportunity to amend these observations, as she calls them, modify them, add...

The Minister just leads me into sort of my next thought, my next question. I mean, why do we budget on last year’s numbers if we know that we’re going to have demographics that are going to likely cause us to have an increase? So it’s kind of a rhetorical question, I’ve said this before; I have great difficulty in the fact that we establish our original budgets based on numbers which we expect to change and then come back three or four times during the year and say, oh, gee whiz, we need more money. So more of a comment than anything, Mr. Chair.