Bill Braden

Mr. Speaker, does the successful bidder, Shepell-fgi, have an office here in the NWT and resident full-time staff? Is it fully compliant with the conditions of the business incentive policy that is in place to, in fact, enable northern businesses to be sustained here?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Based on these circumstances, Northstar has requested in writing to the Minister responsible for Human Resources that the matter be independently reviewed and the RFP be reissued. I agree with the owners of Northstar, and my constituents who have been adversely impacted, that this RFP should be reopened and re-bid. The Minister needs to ensure the process is fair and transparent and that this highly valued and effective service will continue for our employees, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

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Mr. Speaker, we know that within our own Employee Assistance Program, the growth in the number of calls for support has increased substantially between 2005 and 2006 and 2006 and 2007, something like a 42 percent increase. This signals that we have got a substantial need here. I wanted to ask the Minister if he has any indication from the people in his department about this, but a concern is that, now that we have lost these resident professionals from the Northstar contract, there is going to be a much greater demand on other parts of our mental health care system because we will not have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask some questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Roland. It relates to mental health services and the demands that we are encountering here in the NWT. I was wondering if the Minister could give us a snapshot of the current level or the current demand for mental health services and our capacity to help people to deal with these, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, to what extent is cost a factor in evaluating this kind of service? Do we have any sense of just how much of the value of this contract is going to be staying here in the North as opposed to being in the hands of a southern firm, Mr. Speaker? We know, for instance, from the Northstar folks, because virtually all of their services are supplied by resident contractors, but 92 per cent of the value of the contract stayed in the North. How much are Shepell-fgi's going to, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for Mr. Dent, the Minister responsible for Human Resources. It concerns the awarding of the employee and family assistance contract earlier this year. Mr. Speaker, given the high quality of service demonstrated by Northstar over the seven years that it had this contract, and given the tremendous increase in the size of the civil service and the growth in the number of requests over these years, and given the intrinsic value of nurturing, protecting and enabling northern grown businesses to stay in business here to keep resident...

Thank you, Mr. Braden. We understand from some of the background research that committee has done into this, that the location of these two positions has yet to be determined. So we don’t know which regions or which communities they are going to go to. In fact, similar positions that have been recruited for in the past have been extremely difficult to recruit to. On this one, I am with Mr. McLeod. I looking at the amount of resources, both PY and financial, and it should be noted here that this is $291,000 for two positions. I am assuming that includes travel and related expense to this job...

Where in the North Slave region is this going, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, stand in support of the motion. I’m pleased to see it here. In the almost eight years now that I’ve served in this Assembly, looking back I’ve tried to take a bit of an inventory of just what have we done, or at least what have I done and helped do in the last two terms here that might have contributed something to our government’s role in reducing alcohol abuse. Not a lot of things come to mind, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps I should go through some of the acts in the legislation, but I do recall I think the Motor Vehicles Act in was it the previous Assembly, in...

Mr. Chair, I don't want to make the assumption that is just a shower building as we see a little bit higher on the page we're also building a shower building in Fort Providence for $70,000, but the one at Natanlaii is $226,000. So that's the level of detail I'm looking for.