Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m just going to use this opportunity to highlight a few areas of general concern. Of course, I’d certainly like to see ourselves do a little more in the treatment area. I’m not sure that the Minister’s Forum, in my view, was their forum panel, and certainly research done on addictions and whatnot was the approach I would have liked to have seen. They have come up with some recommendations, but like anything, it’s all about implementation and how we follow through. There was a commitment in there, the observation of making a treatment centre available or treatment...

I’m going to ask a question specifically to CAMTS, not the RFP. Maybe the Minister can explain what this is and why it’s important in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Recently I was down in Edmonton with a number of my Social Programs colleagues and the Minister of Health to visit the medevac centre at the Edmonton airport. I’m certainly glad to see the operation that has been put into place.

As we all know, presently there’s a medevac contract out and one of the requirements of the contract is for what’s called CAMTS, Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transportation Systems. This is a critical component of the medevac contract that’s out right now.

The Minister will probably cite his three-line sentence that he repeated four...

Mr. Speaker, the only question over here is asking about transparency. It’s not about stopping jobs. No one would stop that freight train. I’m telling you that if these appointments were truly worthy of the appointment, then the government shouldn’t hide beyond the veil of secrecy, behind the numbers of… We don’t know how many there are and who they’re appointing and who they may be related to. Nobody has any clue. It’s time we show a little courage, lead the nation with a little backbone. Nobody is talking about taking the authority away from Cabinet. We’re just talking about accountability...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Clearly, justice isn’t being served.

What options lie before this particular proponent who wants to bid on this contract and yet they have people who go out there and sandbag their potential credibility on this, which could cause them not to be in a position to qualify as they bid for this.

You know, we can only hide behind the fairness commissioner answer so long. The fact is, what options lie before them, what authorities fall under the ability of the fairness commissioner, and again, why have a fairness commissioner if the Minister is just going to keep saying over...

There must be some authority that the Minister can answer in the House today that the fairness commissioner can do and investigate. It’s not about deciding about the contract. I’m just saying when we’ve got corporate espionage in some form or fashion, if that really is the case, I don’t know, and I want to give them the chance to review it properly because they are the experts.

What type of remedies and options lie before this person providing this? What’s the point of having a fairness commissioner if they won’t review the situation? I don’t know; I’m trying to bring it to the Minister so we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister should resign himself to the fact that he should know this.

Next question. We know many times with historical values of vacant positions, which is approximately 14, 15, 16 percent, but if we use it as a rolling number, to be fair, that’s approximately $15 million passed in this House that are human resources compensation and benefits dollars each and every year.

So, what does the Department of Human Resources do to track that money, the $15 million that nobody knows where it’s going? How do we follow the money? The department may say that this is micro...

I want to ask the Minister for, quite simply, a clear and simple answer. We have 35 positions, which probably roughly works out to about $3.5 million, which were originally intended for human resource money that could actually put that nurse in Colville Lake, whether it can put that maintainer back in Paulatuk or other types of plumbers or those types of critical jobs that we always talk about.

My next question for the Minister of Human Resources is: We often hear about the fact that, for example, Stanton runs a deficit, the Beau-Del runs a deficit, all of these organizations run deficits...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to use today’s occasion to return to the northern jobs issue that I, as well as many of my good colleagues, have been raising over the past several days.

We all know very well that we pass compensation dollars here every single year and in every single budget, and we certainly expected that money to be used for the reason it’s passed. It’s difficult for me to go back to the taxpayer to say the government needs more money and they’re not spending it the way we’ve appropriated it. They look and ask what are we really doing here.

Since I’ve been discussing this...

So the Minister is unwilling to provide a solution in the public here. What use is having a fairness commissioner if we have no solution for a particular proponent who wants to bid on this potential contract and is being sandbagged behind the scenes?

Is the government willing to sit by and allow this without providing any options or remedies or just say let it play out? Are we going to hear the same answer, and you might as well just table the answer if that’s what he’s going to do over there. Thank you.