Bill Braden

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Unchecked global warming will devastate the global economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, according to a major British report released today that seeks to quantify the costs and benefits of action as well as inaction. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said of the report, it is not in doubt that if the science is right that consequences for our planet are literally disastrous. This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime. Unless we act now, these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be...

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...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Some brief comments and a question. Of course, I am speaking here as a proponent of the bill. It’s one of the larger ones to come before this Assembly so far, Madam Chair, at about 360 clauses.

I guess one very general observation I would make about this kind of legislation, Madam Chair, is elections are one of the very significant cornerstones of democracy and of the faith and the trust that our constituents have in how they choose their representatives. It’s not something that should ever be taken for granted. That is a very strong and compelling reason for this...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Mr. Lafferty. What we heard - committee's general comments to the report, Mr. Speaker.

The focus of our second annual pre-budget consultations was the cost of living. The high cost of living was one of the concerns we heard about the most during our 2005 hearings. It includes the cost of essentials such as housing, food, childcare, electricity, and fuel.

The GNWT already spends about $128 million, or roughly 13 percent of its total budget, on subsidies to help reduce the cost of living, including public housing, income assistance, and fuel and power...

Mr. Speaker, good regulation means that we have to have good legislation to back it up. Is the Minister aware of anything that this Assembly should be considering to enable the highest possible standard of regulatory monitoring and control of this project, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you for the answer, Mr. Speaker. Where I would like to go with this is in getting some assurance that there is adequate jurisdiction on the various kinds of lands in the Northwest Territories -- federal, municipal, Commissioner’s lands, aboriginal lands -- and the regulatory framework that is assigned to each of them. Is there a comprehensive and a cohesive regulatory framework that will enable this project to be properly regulated as it goes through these various types of lands and has various types of impacts, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize the Nats’ejee K’eh workers today in the gallery and a constituent of Great Slave, an ally of these workers, Mr. Todd Parsons, the president of the Union of Northern Workers, Mr. Speaker.

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Thank you, Madam Chair. This motion speaks to issues, longstanding issues I think with the general sort of service orientation and attitude and approach toward being an accessible and an open organization. Madam Chair, I know that going into WCB offices here in Yellowknife has some very stringent security requirements regarding access. I have tried to work with and assist workers who have had issues with the WCB, and I know that one worker in particular was denied and just total outright flat denied access to the office even though he was in the company of my constituency assistant. I...