Bill Braden

Mr. Speaker, I’d certainly support something that’s more timely. If there’s a way of enabling our system to be more responsive, we invest already quite heavily in enabling organizations like the Native Women’s Association to deliver ABE, but it seems now with our society, our economy working the way it is, we’ve got to do some more to enable the students to actually participate in this. So would the Minister be able to bring something forward, perhaps as early as this spring, that would enable even a pilot project to get underway and see if we can find a better way to do this, Mr. Speaker?

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Mr. Speaker, I have a question for Mr. Dent as the Minister for Education, Culture and Employment. It’s a bit of a follow-up, Mr. Speaker, from an item that we discussed here in this Assembly last fall regarding the status of people who enter the adult basic education course, but who, in a lot of cases, Mr. Speaker, find themselves without the supports, without the cash flow to be able to continue in ABE and thus seem to end up back in that cycle of poverty and not being able to get ahead. When we discussed this in the fall, the Minister committed to looking at what could be done and I...

So, Mr. Speaker, the court is going to come up with rules regarding chronic pain and how it’s applied, not our own governance council, our own potentially Legislative Assembly, our own stakeholders. Is this responsible governance to go back to the court to tell them, to ask them to set our policy? Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, my questions this afternoon are for Mr. Dent as the Minister responsible for the Workers’ Compensation Board of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Mr. Speaker, our Workers' Compensation Board spends dollars, significant dollars, and retains a substantial legal talent to apply and interpret the rules and implement the procedures that hit holes when considering the cases of injured workers who bring claims before it. But Mr. Speaker, one injured worker at least has had to endure significant procedural steps and a significantly long period of time in order to get, potentially...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Ivan Valic is a 51-year-old man. His life has been shattered by a 19-year-long odyssey involving claims for chronic pain for the Workers’ Compensation Board of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Mr. Valic was a robust young construction worker in 1987 when he suffered the first of four work-related injuries over a 10-year period. Now, Mr. Speaker, he lives a solitary life in a basement apartment of Calgary. He has lost everything. He is an angry and frustrated man who has endured almost two decades of systemic manipulation, perpetual bureaucratic process and clear...

Mr. Speaker, we seem to have a couple of options here. A number of the clients who try to get into this kind of program are on income support and there is really no provision for them to cover the extra expenses that they might incur. Meanwhile, we obviously do not allow ABE instruction on the same basis for funding as regular student financial assistance. Has the department been able to look at whether or not we can change our minds about SFA and help enrol these people on that same basis and help them get further ahead, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, would the Minister or would the WCB, through the Minister, make available to this Assembly, and to the stakeholders, and the public, the draft or the proposed policy that it is going to submit to the courts to see indeed if the policy fits the needs of the stakeholders and not only the courts, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, what actions will the governance council of the WCB take to address the shortcomings in its chronic pain policy, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Part of this allocation refers to some disaster assistance for the charter community of K’ahsho Gotine resulting from some flooding last spring during the break-up. There is $1.006 million booked for this. Mr. Chairman, part of the detail here says that up to 85 percent of these costs will be recovered through the federal government’s disaster financial assistance arrangement and I wanted to see what kind of certainty there is to recovering up to 85 percent of this. That would be about $850,000, a fair amount of money. Can the Minister provide some comment to the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Briefly, I think. This is very positive legislation. I’m going to be voting in favour of it. It continues to take a product and I guess something that’s been accepted in virtually every society and civilization in the world and we’re trying to change people’s attitudes about it after many, many generations of normality, in fact even desirability. We’re now saying that we’ve got to change our attitudes and we’re showing some signs of success. So these changes in societal behaviour are big projects that do not show immediate return, but from what I understand, the trends...