Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to table three documents. I will table them as a compendium package here. What I will do is I will name what they are. They are three individual stories that are printed off from the Internet. One is called the New Orderly Daytime Home Shelter Looks a Lot Different this Year. The second one is Part I, The City and the County Takes on Madison Day Shelter, and third, Drop-in Homelessness Linked to New Shelter. They are very interesting stories that I think are good for the public to see.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate your guidance on that issue. The ultimate problem here is we have well-known deviant behaviour happening there. The Minister has even highlighted it in our discussions. Is the management responsible to provide a safe environment that is free of violence and substance abuse? Thank you.

To be clear, what role does the management play in the operation and running of a day shelter, if the Minister is blaming the problems on the clientele?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to be absolutely crystal clear. My problem isn’t with the employees. My problem isn’t with the people who use the thing. I think they need the help and I think they deserve respect and dignity by giving them help. My issue comes down to the management style of the way that that place is running. So how can this Minister guarantee that this place will be running better and not more of the same? Thank you.

Thank you. I was listening to the Minister’s answer very attentively and what I hear is an organization bid for the proposal. It sounds like they underbid it, didn’t know what they were bidding on, and now they want more money to run it in a new fashion. The question was not answered in any way specific to the Minister’s quote, which was he said there was contribution agreement problems, year-end report problems and proposal problems.

What are those problems? Are we holding money back because they have not fulfilled their obligations? Let’s be clear on the record. What obligations have they not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In a way never before, the NWT took Ottawa by storm, led by our Premier, Bob McLeod. Mr. McLeod’s vision and leadership brought together many politicians, Aboriginal leaders, and certainly business leaders in a way never before seen, united in a front to support the North. Our campaign without his leadership wouldn’t have gone as far as it did. It was a great success. Our campaign was to raise northern issues, and it all came down to the leadership of Bob McLeod. He deserves our thanks for that, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

In a way never before, to his credit, he brought the...

Mr. Speaker, what I’m hearing from the Minister is the department can’t put their paperwork together in order to ask for a proper proposal. We have the Tree of Peace less than two blocks away. We have the Salvation Army just a few blocks north to that particular thing. The Salvation Army has even expressed interest in this particular project if they’d like to take it on. We would rather be satisfied with a substandard or an extensively inadequate product rather than sort of reaching out to what’s good.

Why is it better to continue on with the same people who can’t even force reasonable policies...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, wish to acknowledge and recognize both Chuck and Muriel Tolley, and I wish to agree with Mr. Miltenberger that James Tolley does have a tough job working for the Finance Minister. I, as well, wish to acknowledge NWT Tourism as a whole and recognize our good friend Mr. David Krutko, a former Member here.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table a letter addressed to me. It’s in response to a written question I wrote, Written Question 12-17(3), regarding senior management bonus salary ranges. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the day shelter services are so important here in the city and they do help a lot of people. But the reality is, if it’s going to keep being run into the ground by the same bunch of people, we might as well just stop, refresh our mandate and policy, and ask ourselves why do we do this and how do we do it right.

Why doesn’t the Minister just say, let’s take this money that we’re committing into going forward, shut it down and put out a real proposal so we get the services we need that help people who need services such as the day shelter provides, rather than allowing it in its...