Bill Braden

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In this area and related to it was a considerable piece of change in here in going from a three person panel with the expectation that there would be a chair and a nominee from the employer sector and a nominee from the workers’ sector to hear appeals and thus have more assurance that there was going to be balanced decision-making through this process.

We are, in this bill, making a shift from a multiple person panel to sole adjudicator process for the appeal mechanism. I am speaking in favour of this. It also reflects what we have already done, I believe, Mr. Chair...

Madam Chair, thank you. My remarks will be brief. First of all to acknowledge the willingness of the Minister, Mr. Roland, to accept the pleas from a number of us on this side, myself included, to engage in the review and in the modernization of this bill. I believe we are the third Assembly in more than a decade to have attempted to do this and we can actually check this one off as something that was long overdue. So I want to acknowledge, again, the Minister’s willingness to engage, and, of course, the work that he and his staff and contractors have done to get us to this day.

Madam Chair...

Thank you for the information. Now we know that $5 million is what we have on the table for the initial start of the construction. Mr. Speaker, looking back at some files from the previous debate on the Bridge Corporation from 2003, in March of 2003, the NWT Association of Communities passed a resolution. It is in support of the construction of a bridge. It resolved that the NWT Association of Communities supports the proposal so long as the benefits to users can be shown to significantly exceed the costs. Can the Premier produce information that would support and endorse the Association...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, there are a couple of things in here that should be celebrated, as Ms. Lee pointed out, when we see good work, even if it is the result of years of hard slogging. When the paperwork actually lands on the desk and we are given the chance to say yes to it and really have it mean something, then that is something that makes this job worthwhile.

Ms. Lee has highlighted the territorial dementia centre, a long sought after program. Madam Chair, I think just about all Members, members of the general public, the media, have all heard the stories of families that are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Most of the presenters expressed a view that while they would like to see the government introduce better means to address illegal and illicit activities in their communities, evicting people from their homes may, in fact, cause more social problems in communities.  There is also a question about how effectively SCAN legislation would address the issue it is designed to address.

In Yellowknife, Ben McDonald stated that “It seems like the act is designed as good politics but I don’t think it’s necessarily designed as good social policy or as good social development...

Mr. Speaker, what steps will the WCB be taking to address the relatively large caseload of longstanding chronically unresolved issues for injured workers? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am very pleased to stand here today and recognize my wife of almost 30 years now, Valerie;…

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…my mother of all my life, Esther; a great friend and teacher of many people across the North, Ed Jeske.

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Mr. Speaker, I would also like to recognize a constituent and leader in the arts community here in Yellowknife, Mr. Glen Abernethy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The offer that the Minister has made to sort of brief committee on the fly here on the floor in the dying days of this Assembly really falls short. It demonstrates a number of the things that we’ve talked about over and over in the life of this Assembly. I spoke to them this afternoon in my reply to the opening address; that communication issues have really dogged the relationship between just about every department or other and committee. I am sort of doubly frustrated here because at heart I am a tourism guy, Mr. Chairman, but I also have a responsibility to be a...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Is that the extent of the information that the Minister is able to provide?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Wednesday, August 22, 2007, I will move the following motion: Now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Hay River South, that this Legislative Assembly strongly recommends the Minister responsible for the Workers’ Compensation Board extend Mr. Denny Rodgers’ appointment as chair of the Governance Council to April 12, 2008. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.