Robert Hawkins

There have been occasions when this particular Minister has been quoted in this House about demanding that salaries get publicized. So why would this question be less relevant when he’s a Minister now? I’d like to ask specifically as Minister what has he done, rather than asking committee to make the recommendations that you can either follow or not follow, but what has the Minister done in his capacity to bring forward the information as I’ve suggested in the manner I’ve suggested? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today in my Member’s statement I talked about other jurisdictions that proactively take the right approach in disclosing salary ranges for civil servants. In the Northwest Territories it presents itself as a very significant challenge.

My question is to the Minister of Human Resources. What is the Minister doing to publish public service salaries over the range by way of example of $75,000 in the similar manner as BC or even Ontario does? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At the same time, I’d like to request some information on Sissons. As I understand it, there are, I’m going to say, code violations, although I’m not sure that’s the right phrase. So I stress I don’t want to cause any alarms, but if I understand it, there were some violations that were important upgrades. Whether it be the fire alarm system or things of that nature, I don’t recall them at this particular second, but there was an assessment on short-term needs at Sissons, and I’m wondering if I can get a briefing note that reflects the immediate and medium-term Sissons’...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Many jurisdictions in Canada publish the salaries, or at least the salary ranges of individual civil servants. This has obvious benefits for accountability and transparency.

In New Brunswick, salary ranges for all employees are listed by department in the government’s annual public accounts. Nova Scotia has just begun requiring government agencies to publicly disclose the compensation, direct and indirect, of anyone who receives more than $100,000 in that fiscal year. Ontario publishes the salaries for public employees earning more than $100,000 a year by name on a...

Mr. Speaker, what type of budget do we provide our tourism folks that specifically target the rubber tire traffic and tourism market? As we try to invest in particular parks around our surrounding communities across the territory, we must have a particular budget that we say, come to Inuvik and use that park, come to Hay River and use that park. What type of budget do we spend, and that is reflected to the return on investment with the numbers and links to my very first question, where are people coming from? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the Minister of Tourism for his Minister’s statement today. I had a couple of questions regarding his particular statement.

In his statement, he talked about 23,000 camping nights that were recorded over the territorial parks this particular year and he had also highlighted it was a slight decrease from the year before at 23,500. I guess my question really comes down to trying to get a sense of utilization of our particular parks.

Does the Minister provide a breakout as to where some of these people are coming from? I’m trying to get a context of our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today, I talked about Health and Social Services to get their social workers to work in collaboration with our local RCMP. I think we can create a pilot project here in Yellowknife that could be extended throughout the North. With every opportunity that we can build positive relationships, I think, is a good thing.

In the context of working in a helping hand approach, would the Minister be willing to look at and examine a situation as described through what the Vancouver Policing Services uses, by getting some social workers out there on the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for those several commitments that are through those questions.

The last particular question is quite a simple one. What type of planning is the Department of ITI doing in the sense of expanding the Fred Henne Park area? I say that in conjunction with the Department on Transportation. As we all know, it is putting a road through the realignment of Highway No. 4, there becomes a great opportunity to expand the usage of Fred Henne. Does the Minister have any future commitments that are going to build on the growth of Fred Henne by way of a capital...

I want to thank the Minister for that particular answer. Just continuing along that same theme specific to, obviously, parks: What type of capacity does the department see in our particular parks? He did say that those numbers were predominantly reflective of the North Slave, but does the Minister’s office or the department, that is, track the actual usage and capacity of those particular parks? In other words: How many nights were 100 percent full? How many nights were 20 percent full? How many nights did we have to turn other people away to say go find another park? I know that there’s Reid...

Would the Minister be willing to help designate someone from the Department of Health to work with me and the RCMP to help raise the profile of this particular issue? In the coming months, I realize this is not something that, if you said yes today, we’d start tomorrow, but in the months we could prepare and build a bit of objectives and work together to a collaborative solution to help people, namely youth of course, but to help people on the streets in the night that do need that little assistance.