Bill Braden

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for Mr. Roland, the Minister of Finance. It concerns the upcoming federal budget. Mr. Speaker, I would like to see if the Minister went to bat for tourism operators in the Northwest Territories who potentially face a major increase in the cost of their product sold overseas, because the Conservative government wants to apply the 6 percent GST to those packages, something that’s never been done before and creates an enormous barrier to these tourism operators. Did the Minister relay, on behalf of our tourism operators, objection to this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to deal with the motion I gave notice of earlier today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased to report on the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures. This is our report on referred matters.

On October 26, 2006, the Speaker referred two issues to the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures.

The first issue related to the amount of time available for Members’ statements by a Member speaking in more than one official language.

The second referred issue was the addition of a section entitled “Acknowledgements” to the daily order of business in the Assembly.

The Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures held an initial meeting on December 4, 2006...

Finally, Mr. Speaker, the other big one on the shopping list here is related to the resource revolution stuff, is the formula financing deal that I know in fact we tried to crack that one even late in the previous Assembly, Mr. Speaker. After almost four years now, are we going to see some real progress in amending the very old-fashioned and cumbersome formula financing deal that we now have with Ottawa, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister just mentioned item number two on the shopping list here, and that is the northern residents tax deduction. This Assembly passed a motion asking the Minister to take this up with his Nunavut and Yukon counterparts and then, of course, take it to Ottawa. Has the Minister now taken this request directly to Ottawa and what have they got to say about it, Mr. Speaker?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Next Monday, the federal Minister of Finance for Canada, Mr. Flaherty, is going to be delivering his budget. There are a few things on that list that I want to take one more opportunity to make sure Mr. Flaherty knows, from the point of view of northerners, we would sure like to see in that budget.

Mr. Speaker, at the very top of the list, of course, goes the desire and the very deserving proposals that we have been looking for resource revenue sharing, Mr. Speaker, and devolution of the control of those resources to the Northwest Territories. Bring those resources and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

WHEREAS the Official Languages Act gives Members of the Legislative Assembly the right to use any of the official languages of the Northwest Territories in its debates;

AND WHEREAS this Assembly is committed to the preservation, development and enhancement of its official languages;

AND WHEREAS there is currently no order of the day that allows Members to acknowledge significant milestones and accomplishments in the lives of their constituents;

NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes, that Rule 36(3) and (4) be deleted in their entirety...

Madam Chair. The circumstance that injured workers can find themselves in if they have been through, I guess, the standard cycle of reviews and appeals before the WCB, is that they will find themselves without the resources or the ability to call on legal or medical help to help them advance their case. That is of course with the exception, Madam Chair, of having access to the NWT’s legal aid system. We now are chronically under-resourced and understaffed in the legal aid area, Madam Chair, and so that means that an injured worker who may have very few or no alternatives other than to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. If there is one real tangible result that can come from this, it is that those workers…Madam Chair, I know that the Auditor General considered about 40 files of injured workers and just about all of them had longstanding cases that they were trying to get resolved. If we can do one tangible thing, it would be to see some kind of mechanism whereby they may see some resolution and some closure to their claim or to their case.

Madam Chair, it is well understood here that not all workers are going to get everything they think should be coming to them. The WCB does have a...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am very pleased to speak to the report, the work of my colleagues, the work of the Auditor General of Canada and her staff in accepting our request and, of course, the many workers who assisted in bringing to our attention their situation and the remedies that we should be looking at to make for a better WCB.

Madam Chair, my primary interest, as an MLA, is to give voice to my constituents and, in this case, to the many workers who have approached me over the past few years with their stories. Madam Chair, we have a picture of an organization that, for the most part...