Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate the words of recognizing the important work and the impacts they have; I'm sure the employees do as well. That said, recognizing the important work and the impacts of the work that they do, it must come at a cost that they've been on strike for close to two weeks, a little more than two weeks, and as such, does the Minister know how much the strike has currently cost the LHO and what are they prepared to do financially to deal with this while the strike is going on? So I want to know some dollar amounts the department has been assessing the impacts of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, first off, I want to say thank you to the Member of Monfwi for sharing her concerns, being honest about her concerns in the sense of -- I respect that. And I don't have a problem that she has questions, by any means. And I think this is the debate I'm talking about when, you know, sometimes you find those arguments and challenges in debates, but I think the important thing here to focus in on is this: That could become some of the discussion during the review after second reading if it goes to committee and get some public feedback and maybe find out -- the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First off, I'm going to thank and acknowledge the Minister from -- or sorry, the Member -- maybe one day -- but certainly the Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh for seconding the motion. He raises some really good concerns, and I fully support the issues he brings, which is many of these small communities are so underresourced and they're piled on with more challenges, you know, they just have nowhere to go and they're challenged all the way around to find ways to move dollars around just to get the job done and, yet, here they are they're often struggling and one could say...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I just want to kick off debate as I did earlier, but I probably won't spend as much time going through this one. This motion speaks for itself.

Communities, whether you live in a large one or a small one, are all starved for resources. We talked about the municipal funding gap at length. And this is just one more thing piled on to them that they need to respond to.

Mr. Speaker, the challenge is, of course, we know, first of all, it's money, so the resource of money is not there for these communities. Then you have the skills and abilities to do this. I mean...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First off, I want to thank all the committee members on this side of the House for their very rich and important and thoughtful comments. Mr. Speaker, a couple of them I want to highlight.

First of all, I'll start with the Member on my left, for Range Lake. These are the types of issues on his agenda, constantly raising with committee, trying to support community members. You know, and I often hear him say he recognizes the Mackenzie Delta Member who's dealing with his challenges in his community. I hear the Member from the Sahtu talk about the community impacts that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

WHEREAS the rate of violent crime is on the rise in the Northwest Territories;

AND WHEREAS the RCMP have publicly acknowledged the link between drugs and unprecedented homicides in the Northwest Territories;

AND WHEREAS the RCMP have publicly stated they appear to be the only resource to deal with mental health emergencies;

AND WHEREAS the RCMP responding to a mental health crisis is time consuming and uses significant valuable RCMP resources that could be managed by a worker trained to respond to mental health crises;

AND WHEREAS support for Northwest Territories-trained...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I raise the issue of the Saskatchewan First Nations offered a program, and I guess I would say to the Minister that, you know, is something like this in general -- could this be worked into contribution agreements whereas in the GNWT works with the department of education through the Department of Finance under contribution agreements to find ways to bring NGOs supportive training up to a higher standard than what we're currently offering them, which is, you know, one-offs from time to time. So in other words -- allowing the Minister to get a second there...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to talk about training supports for shelter workers.

Mr. Speaker, finding ways to help de-escalate violence for shelter workers who work on the frontline is a goal of mine, and I'm sure it's supported by many of our colleagues here. We would like to see the de-escalation of violence long before it gets out of hand and the RCMP have to be called or anyone certainly gets hurt. And on that note, Mr. Speaker, from the RCMP they had mentioned that over 2,268 calls to shelters in Yellowknife over a period of two years, that's April 2022 to April 2024, of those...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Member for Sahtu, that Bill 8, An Act to Amend the Student Financial Assistance Act, be read for a second time.

Mr. Speaker, this bill amends the Student Financial Assistance Act in increasing the maximum amount of money that can be loaned to a person under the Act from $60,000 to $90,000. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to save a lot of time by saying I agree with the amendment. So I'm not going to oppose it. It's not exactly the direction I was going, but it speaks to the exact intent of what I was going with, so I have no problem. I should point out there is no such thing as a friendly amendment. They are amendments, and I'm pleased to accept this one. So if you want to call that friendly, that's fine too. So no problem. Thank you.