Robert Hawkins

Thank you. Personal responsibility and sending people out for treatment, let’s follow that thread to see where we go.

We send people out and we have contracts down south and I’m aware that they’re coming up in the new year. Let’s start with finding out first what the success rate is of the people we send out of the Northwest Territories on these treatment programs. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think everyone knows how I feel about this particular issue but, just in case someone hasn’t heard, I’m certainly willing to share it, once again, in this Assembly.

How far have we carried this message of addictions and the need for action? Study after study keeps telling us the same things our Minister’s Forum on Addictions keeps telling us. What have we learned? We’ve learned the same things over and over again, yet we’ve realized nothing.

What we have realized is we’ve seen the closure of the Nats’ejee K’eh. That was a bombshell. That was a shocker to every single...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This has been both a difficult and challenging issue that many of our Members have been dealing with as of late. I want to thank, first off, Mr. Yakeleya for his passion and his commitment to the people of the Sahtu. He has challenged this hill with great fervency and zeal. I can tell you that this has not been, hey, let’s do this, and what do you guys think. He’s brought Bill 24 over with a lot of work, and I can tell you, when he first started talking about this a few years ago, saying we have to do something, it started with we have to do something. Then it went...

The citizens of Yellowknife feel very strongly about this, and I’m not trying to raise the ire of the Members here or certainly the public, but quite often you hear, when we call for a treatment centre here in Yellowknife, they say, well geez, the Legislative Assembly has an anti-Yellowknife attitude. Well, some days it really feels like that, but when they closed the Nats’ejee K’eh Centre, you think that they have an anti-treatment attitude. They’ve hurt Northerners. They spent a quarter of a million as a retainer for these treatment services down south.

What is the Minister willing to invest...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to this opportunity to ask questions to the Health Minister regarding crack and prescription drug use and what we are doing about it.

I was talking to my eight-year-old son yesterday, and this is no word of a lie and I dare anyone to counter that. He told me he heard about crack, and I’m telling you that was a shock to my wife and I to hear about it. We asked him what this is and he says, the kids talk about it at school. It’s not about one school, it’s the fact it upsets me and actually really ticks me off that my eight-year-old son is starting to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to read in a motion for the record. I move that clause 26 of Bill 3 be amended by adding the following after subclause (2):

(3) A person who has not received a written response from a local harvesting committee, local band council or Metis council within 60 days after making a written request to the organization for a recommendation for a special harvester licence may, in writing, request the Minister to contact the organization to inquire about the status of the request.

(4) On receiving a request under subsection (3), the Minister may contact the local...

Mr. Speaker, we need an answer to this question. Why are engineered power rates okay if you’re outside of Yellowknife but not in Yellowknife? It’s a question of fairness.

The only thing the Minister didn’t do there is thank me for giving him such a platform or soapbox to provide a Minister’s statement to in defence.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister used, as a distracting technique, to start talking about commercial rates. I keep talking about residential rates for the working family. As I said, and the Minister did pick up that 1,000 kilowatts is more expensive in Yellowknife than it is in Iqaluit. It is certainly way more expensive, twice as expensive in Yellowknife versus Whitehorse.

What immediate relief can the Minister of the NWT Power Corp do? We engineer the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said yesterday, Yellowknife is number one; the Northwest Territories is number one. What was that again? We’re number one. Power rates continue to be the highest.

If you take 1,000 kilowatts here in Yellowknife, you have to pay over $300; 1,000 kilowatts in Iqaluit, $275. We continue to be number one and we get dwarfed by Whitehorse where a thousand kilowatts only charges you $146. We’re number one, thanks to the Premier in his old job when he re-engineered the power rates. He engineered the communities’ rates, which I am certainly happy that he did help them...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to use this last second to say thank you to the Minister. He did hear a lot of the issues committee had raised, although, as you heard from other Members, we had not been able to get them all as far as we wanted to, but he was willing to work with us and, as such, you can see today the support of Cabinet on all of those motions. Could we have had more? I’m not sure. We may have wanted more sometimes, but it’s all about trying to get the best bill and work together and get a solution for everyone. Certainly I’m pleased to support this bill at large.

Once...