Robert Hawkins

Mr. Speaker, the Minister can continue to gild the lily on this problem but it’s not changing the fact that the everyday ratepayer can’t afford their power bills. People are leaving and there’s no way we’re going to attract people here to the Northwest Territories.

The last thing I’m going to say is there’s the old saying, death by a thousand cuts, and I think the everyday ratepayers had 999 of them and they cannot take one more. The question to the Minister is: He talked about the Stabilization Fund, is it not time to continue to focus in on other solutions that deliver immediate respite to...

The Minister talks about all great and wonderful things in the fullness of time. Global warming is coming sooner than some of the results of these initiatives, and quite frankly, I think we should wait for global warming over those initiatives because they will solve our problem at the speed they’re flowing through.

Has the NWT Power Corp ever done any type of analysis on the burden of the everyday ratepayer in comparison to other cities? So, in other words, have they taken any analysis of what the city of Yellowknife ratepayer would pay on their power bills versus their income versus other...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to use today’s occasion to talk about an important issue. I want to give thanks to all those people out there that ensure the Northwest Territories and, more particularly, the city of Yellowknife is at number one.

We’re number one and normally that’s something to be truly proud of, but not in this particular case. Why, many ask? Well, this city of Yellowknife’s power rates continue to outshine all other cities across Canada. Believe it or not, our power bill rates are higher than Iqaluit’s or even Whitehorse. So we’re number one. Is that something to be proud of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Premier. Please provide a current list of all direct appointments from the beginning of the 17th Assembly to today’s date, including the following information:

Cabinet approval date;

position;

department;

community; and

name of individual appointed.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the mover of the motion, Mr. Nadli, Member for Deh Cho, for bringing forward this very important motion.

I’ll say I’ve certainly experienced good morels and I can tell you it’s always good to have good morels from time to time.

Sorry, folks, I’m here for 19 minutes, not all week.

On a serious note, it’s always good to see the government honour its commitments with First Nations and this could be a small reminder of how important that is. When you honour a small commitment, it demonstrates your ability to follow through on the big ones. We often hear about...

Thank you. Well, we all know where the money is going because it’s found in a report, that report is tabled, it’s available at the library or on-line. That’s all great information, but is there any follow-up compendium to know how the money was spent and what were the results achieved out of that type of money, because that would have all been part of the application to say I need X amount of dollars and this is what I plan to do with them.

Do we know if they actually did the stuff that they’ve applied for and met the spirit and intent of the application? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Recently, I’ve been informed that an applicant to the Growing Forward Program had received some money, but they used it for holidays and to take people away.

I’d like to ask the Minister of ITI, when we give money to applicants in programs like this, how often are they screened and evaluated in a follow-up process to make sure this doesn’t happen on a regular basis? Thank you.

Thank you. Recently I had someone who applied or wanted to apply for a job, but of course it says, as a must, they have to have a high school diploma, but their 20-plus years of experience didn’t matter because their job was pre-qualified and they were encouraged to apply anyway. Frankly, they had to make a choice at that high school year severely impacts their life. Somebody defined it as it continues to haunt their life because they had to make the choice that was right for them, but they can’t apply.

So perhaps I’ll ask it this way, how does the Minister see someone with 20 years’ experience...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, we’re not going to let the Human Resources Minister off that easy because, quite frankly, I don’t think that these goals are being achieved. Often I hear people apply for jobs who have years if not, in some cases, decades of experience, but because they don’t have that actual certification, such as a university degree or a college diploma, they get screened out.

Let’s start off with a simple question by asking the Minister, how often does someone get hired on the principles of they have a university degree, versus the people who’ve brought real life decades of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your generosity there. The Minister says that people follow up, I can provide examples where people don’t follow up on grants and contributions given to individuals where they’ve applied to the department. All I want to know, and I think the public deserves to know right now, is where is this all reported? It’s great we know we can go to, say, group X or business X or NGO X and they got so much money, but we want to know to make sure that they did spend the money as they said they would. So we just need to make sure that that’s the case. That’s the issue...