Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and it is dealing with income assistance.

I’d just like to ask the Minister, what does the department do for people who are stricken to their homes or place of residence and have challenges such as disabilities, reading, writing challenges, anything that might hinder them from being able to go to the income support office to get the assistance in filling out an application? What does the department do with people that need this type of assistance and are stricken to their home? Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I think this does bring merit to the issue of daycare facilities in small communities. I know the staff understands, mainly because of the initial results from the EDI instrument that we were trying to address. Kids are going into school as high as 69 percent not developed. I think this motion speaks to that. It’s also an opportunity where we can support mothers, parents, which ultimately leads to parenting skills but it’s also an opportunity where we are able to monitor a child and allow this child, also, before they go into the junior kindergarten, to develop through play-based...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would just like to ask the Minister what authority he has to make any recommendations for particular or special cases when he’s dealing with his directors in his offices. What authority does he have as Minister? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Minister alluded to my second question. That was how do we reach these individuals who are in their homes. Do we have a community outreach worker or a mobile client service officer for the communities? I know in some of the smaller communities, we have these government service officers that might be able to help, but in some of our regional centres where the GSOs aren’t readily available -- we have a higher population – our home care can address these as well. They usually help in that case.

Can the Minister confirm that in the regional centres that we do have mobile client service officers...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In a perfect world there would be no bullying. Unfortunately, we see it all too often in our schools, in our communities and even in the workplace. However, there is some good news. The good news is that we have a lot of anti-bullying advocates here in the North. For example, today we just had a group of youth in the Great Hall to draw attention to this serious issue with the support of their educators, but it’s not only the youth who are our strongest advocates, we have groups and organizations across this great territory. We have strong advocates in the schools, the...

I just wanted to get confirmation on the consumption and usage of the LNG and whether or not it’s being used at a faster rate than initially proposed when the commissioning happened. I know there was an amount of days that they said that once it was ready to be used, and hearing that it’s actually being consumed a lot faster than what it was initially intended for. I know there are trial and error runs and we want to try to come up with the best solution, so I just want to know if it’s the same thing that the Minister is hearing.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Knowing full well that we’re going to take this agreement on April 1, 2013, not everybody always goes to our websites to review some of this information, and hearing that we had posters out explaining this program in December 2013, nine months after this agreement was supposed to take place, I’d like to ask the Minister – it says that the Safe Disclosure Panel and coordinator will report annually – when can we expect to see a report tabled in this House of some of the best practices and probably some of the challenges or some things that we might not have taken into...

As I mentioned, in the statement that was out on February 21st for the then-Minister of Human Resources, it mentions that a safe disclosure coordinator was going to be put into position as well as a Safe Disclosure Panel.

Would the Minister have the costs of the staffing for this position for this past fiscal year that this government has approved? We aren’t getting any results on this safe disclosure of information pilot project, I guess you can say right now, or this agreement.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On February 21, 2013, then Minister of Human Resources made a statement in this House that the Government of the Northwest Territories signed a memorandum of understanding agreement with the Union of Northern Workers. The agreement outlined procedures for employees to safely disclose allegations of wrongdoings within the government, known as the Safe Disclosure of Information, and the MOU was to take effect April 1, 2013.

Some of these highlights included providing employees with access to an independent mechanism for them to confidentially report situations where the...

The in-kind service is always in there. I mean, obviously the $25,000 that’s allocated, it can only cover so much. So if the in-kind services are the same services that are always provided, then that $25,000 obviously isn’t doing as much as it used to due to forced growth and other things. So I just want to make that comment and just bringing it to light that although we’re still doing the in-kind support, the money that’s not in-kind is only going so far and it’s not going as far as it used to go. Thank you.