Bill Braden

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, colleagues, Mr. Speaker. To the matter of the board’s failed policy on chronic pain, Justice Schuler has left this to be resolved by either the board or by a legislative action of this Assembly.

Mr. Speaker, this decision is a significant indictment of the failure of our WCB to manage in a fair and compassionate way, let alone a legal and proper way, the very reason it exists. I will conclude my statement with one more reflection on Mr. Valic’s situation. The sad part of this story is, as of today, Mr. Speaker, that he is really no further ahead today in his life than when he was...

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question this morning is for Mr. Miltenberger, the Minister of Health and Social Services, and it refers to the issue of making sure that the non-government organizations that we partner with receive a realistic pay and benefit package for their staff, something which we have lost a lot of ground on. Mr. Speaker, a few days ago, the Minister said that he didn’t recall when there was a time when automatic increases were given, and yet I have correspondence from the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Board dating back a couple years now, Mr. Speaker, to July of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, what sort of prevented or stopped the Minister or the government from making actual adjustments and putting appropriate fuel cost increments into the budgets? It seems unusual that we let something lag for as much as three years making sort of stopgap corrections for here and there, but for three years, Mr. Chair, we just sort of let this one slosh around and we are now finally actually making a true adjustment. It seems a little unusual from the fiscal policy point of view or fiscal prudence, Mr. Chair.