Bill Braden

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased to see this initiative coming forward and to give it my support. As a matter of fact, I may be in a position in the next little while to experience its benefits. I am very happy to see that when we do this, it’s something that works for a lot of people. I think this is one of the, unfortunately, little known secrets and advantages of living in the Northwest Territories and raising a family. Whenever I get the chance, I promote this as an enormous benefit that we have that makes us almost unique in Canada. So it is one worth defending, promoting and...

Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask in another area a little bit about the minimum wage provisions. This bill proposes that minimum wage from now on could be set by the Minister in regulation, which is a change. It takes it out of the legislative realm. On occasion, legislatures do go in and amend minimum wage to accommodate for things like the activity or lack of it in the economy or rates of inflation. It’s not done very often. I think I remember in the last eight years, I don’t know that it’s come up more than once in my term here, but I wanted to, and I have no objection to it becoming more...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a couple of provisions here that I wanted to see a bit more information on this otherwise very progressive bill. Mr. Chairman, the bill brings in a couple of areas that provides for more clarification. This is specifically in the areas of compassionate and bereavement leave. The question that I wanted to pose regarded the definition of family, as these two provisions would allow and there is contained in the act a definition of it and I understand also that this is consistent with federal labour legislation. Of course, it’s spouses and children of...

Mr. Speaker, the advisory that the department put out said that these measures will be in effect until the new bridge is in place. Now, I am anticipating that this is going to be some time potentially through the winter traffic months. I don’t need to remind the Minister that there is, for a very short period of time, an incredibly high volume of traffic that needs to use that bridge. Having to slow traffic to a crawl is not only an inconvenience, but I think that the degree of hazard grows in the winter months. Could the Minister advise, then, just when are we going to anticipate that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question this afternoon is for Mr. Menicoche, the Minister for Transportation. It regards a notification that went out about two weeks ago now, a fairly major restriction on the Kakisa River Bridge near the junction of Highways No. 1 and No. 3. Mr. Speaker, we voted just over $9 million over last year and this year to replace the bridge, but the department advised on August 3rd that a considerable restriction was being put on traffic. Truck traffic was being forced down to a five kilometre single-lane use of that bridge. According to a press release issued that...

Okay, Mr. Speaker. Thanks very much for the answer from the Minister. But my information, and I think it's been quite well noted in the media, is that the camp housing proposals that they were looking at for building the pipeline have changed from building I believe it was five major permanent or semi-permanent camps to ones that are far more mobile, smaller and less sophisticated. So that was the point of my question. Maybe we need to compare some notes on it. But regardless, we put a lot of our eggs in that Novel basket, potentially a lot of money had been talked about from this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for Mr. Handley as the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation. As I referenced in my statement, this Assembly has been very busy with one of the potential outcomes of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, and that being a chance to use the Novel housing approach which is a design put forward by ATCO to potentially convert some camp housing into permanent housing in the NWT.

Thank you, colleagues, Mr. Speaker. The NWT continues to have a dramatic housing need. Of course, demonstrated by that information, it amplifies other social problems, but we face considerable constraints in solving this issue, Mr. Speaker. Developments, red hot economies all across western Canada, labour shortages increasing, materials supply costs have added pressures on how we are going to solve this problem.

So what I am looking for, Mr. Speaker, what we should all be looking for, are answers on how we are going to meet our housing needs, current and future. What are the options our...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Finally, in the area of the appeals process under this bill, we are proposing a fairly substantive change there and that is going from a panel to a sole adjudicator model. I wanted to ask the Minister of our ability or intention to ask those people who are currently serving on the appeals panel to gauge their interest in taking on the job as a sole adjudicator and, more specifically, Mr. Chairman, what kinds of training and expertise we would be offering or expecting these people to have before taking them on as sole adjudicators. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The department engaged in quite a considerable consultation process already leading up to this bill and from everything I saw, it was a pretty good process, Mr. Chairman. Will there be further consultation or attempts to see what the general public thinks should be brought in for defining family for this bereavement leave aspect? Is there going to be another round of discussions, Mr. Chairman?