Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Minister because I can start to feel an answer coming any minute now. I can tell you personally that the RCMP do not go out there. My constituents have phoned when they’ve heard people shooting at outhouses. Nobody goes. I mean, do we have to wait for an accident to happen? That’s why I tried to work six months ago with this department to say let’s start identifying the land. This is land right along our highway. This is certainly an area that could be addressed. I’ve suggested that, geez, let’s have land management policies out there. I need an answer...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise with a serious concern with the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development. Late last summer I had a meeting with a constituent who had brought serious concerns to me about having a legal cabin out along the Cameron River and the fact that people were bulldozing trees down, making roads, shooting guns at their cabin as well as other legal cabins and no one was doing anything about it. No RWED officer would be there, no RCMP officer would be there. Well, much later the Minister’s staff comes to me and says it’s not their problem to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, can the Premier tell me from his position what kind of hammer do we have in place to tell these educational authorities to hire our northern students, because we have a policy on our books to hire these northern students? It can either be a hammer or it can be a carrot. I need to know because we have northern students who are graduating from our teaching programs who are working at Extra Foods and other places while southern hires are being hired. So what hammer or carrot is he willing to commit to today just to solve this problem? Thank you, Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am going to direct my question with regard to teaching and graduate placements to the Premier. I feel it was the highest office that made this commitment and it’s up to the highest office to fulfil this commitment on hiring northern graduates.

Mr. Speaker, my question to the Premier is since the directive to hiring responsibility for teachers is with the education authorities, what steps has his government taken that these authorities are taking to heart that promise made by this government to hire northern graduates? I want to know what we are doing to...

Thank you very kindly, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we still need to address the problem by this Minister, which is people are clear-cutting roads from the highway to the water there. How are we going to deal with this? How are we dealing with the garbage being littered along these areas? They’re becoming mushroom party spaces. How does this Minister plan to deal with this? This all goes back to the question that I started to ask six months ago when he said it was MACA’s problem. Now that MACA says it’s RWED’s problem, again, whose problem is this that we’re going to solve? I’m talking about...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in the House today to speak about an important issue of internal audits and to assure that our system is accountable, ethical and efficient in a public service. The unit responsible for internal audits for the GNWT is the Audit Bureau. It is my understanding, Mr. Speaker, that a significant number of important positions in the Audit Bureau are currently vacant. This has been the situation for quite some time. This is a real problem, Mr. Speaker, and something should be done about this concern because it affects all NWT residents.

Mr. Speaker, this issue...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to seek unanimous consent to return to tabling of documents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Apparently that public service announcement has been brought to you by the Minister responsible for the Financial Management Board. Mr. Speaker, I have the rates here back to the year 2000. So for the 2000-01 budget, we had six absences. In 2001-02, there were four absences. In 2003-04, we had five absences. The Minister was correct; we had three absences for this past 2004-05 year. Mr. Speaker, I can understand that there is probably little latitude and movement about offering people more pay and whatnot to attract people. I appreciate his little plug there to look for recruitment, but...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Member’s statement today was about the importance of internal audits and the lack thereof in the sense of human resource capital to do those important jobs. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister responsible for the Financial Management Board tell me exactly how many positions are currently vacant in the Audit Bureau and the average vacancy rates for the past five years? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. Mr. Speaker, I am not ringing the bell to say something is wrong. I am not ringing the bell to suggest something horrible is going on in our public service that we need to catch up to. What I am saying is that we need to do something before something goes wrong, before it is way too late.

We have all heard about the sponsorship scandal and the types of things that are going on at present. Mr. Speaker, last month, we learned about a case in Saskatchewan where over a million dollars of government funding intended for those most in need had been...