R.J. Simpson

You can't get blood from a stone, so I am not sure that fining the owner or doing work and then billing it back is going to do anything here. I am not sure if there is money there to do any of this work. It certainly doesn't seem that way. What is the department willing to do on its own if the owner doesn't do any remediation work? At what point does this become a public health issue that the department has to deal with?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister said there were no housing clients in the high-rise. Income assistance was paying the rent for about a third of the residents of the high-rise, which means that those people, for the most part, were on the housing waitlist. It's not like Housing doesn't have clients in there. They have people waiting to get into housing, so this is an issue. What can I tell them is going to happen in the very near term? What is the plan to house them in the very near term? I know there are long-term solutions. I know all about the rental issues in Hay River. What is the...

I appreciate the update. That's basically the same update that I received back in April at the community meeting. There are still these 18 people who are homeless, essentially with unstable housing, and there are 26 who are temporarily housed. They could be the ones in the leased units from the federal government. Going forward, what's the plan? The Minister said there was a plan. Can you please elaborate on that, and tell us what he's going to do to make sure these people have stable housing?

Thank you to Elder Sarah Cleary for offering today's prayer.

Colleagues, it is my pleasure to welcome you all back to the Chamber to resume the third session of the 18th Legislative Assembly.

I would like to begin by recognizing the Pages this session, who will come from Fort Smith, Norman Wells, and Yellowknife. Welcome and thank you to the Pages. It is our privilege to share this Chamber with these young people and our future leaders. Please join me in thanking them and welcoming them to the Assembly.

Our Assembly was recently home to another group of future leaders, the participants in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm not suggesting that we reduce safety in the territory. Everyone is all for safety. The other question I had was: what portion of WSCC's budget is spent on occupational health and safety responsibilities? I understand the Minister doesn't have that information. I was just wondering for a final question: would the Minister be able to commit to answering the questions I've provided in some sort of written form that I can then share with my constituents who have been raising these concerns with me? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister responsible for WSCC. In the NWT, in Nunavut, the total number of people employed is around 35,000. About a third of those people work for a territorial government or public entity, but those employers only pay one-sixth of all of the revenue WSCC collects from employers. The rest comes from industry, small business, and municipalities, which last year generated $55 million in revenue to WSCC. In turn, WSCC paid out $34.5 million in claims to employees from those organizations. That's a difference of $20 million. I'd just like to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of my favourite things about this job is that every day I learn something new. Obviously, I have had to learn a lot about how laws are made. The specifics of the legislative process aren't as widely known as they could be, so I thought I would share what I have learned with the public.

It all starts with an idea about how to make things better. That idea is developed, expanded, refined, or combined with other ideas, into a bill. Just because an idea gets turned into a bill doesn't mean that the idea was good to begin with, so the legislative process helps us improve...

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Next, we have Mr. Testart.

I appreciate that. I didn't give the Minister enough heads-up on this. I've got some technical questions here, so maybe I'll just jump to a different question. The Minister mentioned this last time when he discussed this issue, that, in 1993, the OH&S function of government was transferred to WSCC. At that time, not only did government save money by transferring this function to WSCC, the government also has what appears to be preferential rates from WSCC, and it has deep pockets. If it's not compliant, it can usually handle any monetary penalty by throwing some taxpayer money at it. It never...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to welcome Max and Julia Trennert to the gallery. It's always nice to have people from Hay River here, especially when we're up here for so long. It really makes it feel like home, so welcome.