Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. WHEREAS the Government of the Northwest Territories is considering signing a Final Agreement on Devolution of Lands and Resources in the imminent future;

AND WHEREAS the agreement, if signed, will result in new resource revenues accruing to the Government of the northwest Territories beginning in 2014-2015;

AND WHEREAS the Government of the Northwest Territories has committed 25 percent of ongoing future resource revenues to Aboriginal governments;

AND WHEREAS it is desirable that there be public transparency and accountability in where the remaining 75 percent of resource...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table a document. It’s an illustration regarding the allocation of new resource revenues. I’ll be drawing attention to it later today during a motion. It needs to be before the House.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to return to item 8 on the orders of the day, oral questions. Thank you.

---Unanimous consent denied

We have a leak in the ship and its sinking and no one seems to know or care why. You’d think that this is a serious problem.

The last point is, there’s an integrity question being called into question and I think the integrity needs to rise all the way to the top to the Minister’s office to say, how is he going to take this situation seriously and what is he going to do about it. So, quite frankly, does the Minister have any clue how many applications are at risk and who is at risk? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the scandalous situation we have here about the lost faxes or even mailed health care forms when people are applying for renewal. My situation comes down to this: We don’t know how many applications have been lost, we don’t know where they have gone, we don’t know who has this information, and we don’t know what they’re doing with this information.

So my question to the Minister of Health and Social Services is: Is he willing to do a public type of inquiry into this process to find out where this information has gone, how...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m proud that this discussion, in my view a decision, is before the House. As I said back in March of this year and as I’ve said many times over the years, home rule is finally coming home to where it belongs: to the people of the Northwest Territories. We’re in a position to chart our own destiny. We’re in the position, if not the driver’s seat, to make our own choices. And remember, sometimes when you’re in charge, you do make mistakes. So I don’t expect things to be perfect, but the exciting thing about being in charge is the people of the Northwest Territories are...

Mr. Speaker, that is certainly good news. The issue I think I didn’t hear the Minister speak to is protection for renters. Is there a chance to look at opportunities to create some type of rent protection measure?

As we all know, the act allows landlords to raise the rent once a year, only on that anniversary, but the problem with that is they could raise it to any amount. If your rent is $2,000 and they say, well, let’s raise it to $5,000, which is something legally we can’t stop them from doing, we need to put a check and safety valve on this process. That is what I’m asking for.

Would the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since 2008, that was the last time we saw any significant amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act. Five years later, so many more problems come forward, and we need, once again, to take a look at this serious issue.

I’ve stood on a few occasions to talk about my concerns about affordable rent protection and even enforcement from the rentals office and implement an order that they provide. As we all know, there are no rent controls in the Northwest Territories. To be clear, I’m not in favour of supporting the idea of rent controls per se, but I have spoken at length...

Mr. Speaker, maybe just one more on the issue of helping complainants bring forward their cause or concerns. When they go to the rental tenancy office, if they are fighting a landlord, quite often, not always, the landlord is well resourced and able to hire a lawyer to fight their perspective, but the little guy or gal who is fighting their cause, for various reasons is under-resourced, and we want a fair hearing.

Would the Minister be willing to look at that type of fairness and find some way to see how we can find our way through this problem? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today, I cited concerns with the Residential Tenancies Act, so I think we could probably dispose of my question very quickly if the Minister is agreeable to a review of the act.

Specifically, I highlighted concerns about fair rental protection measures for hardworking families, a rental officer office that has very little authority or teeth to be able to enforce. The Minister needs to call forward a discussion group between landlords and advocates, to ensure that processes work better when it comes to things like evictions or compromises.

The...