Bill Braden

Mahsi, Madam Speaker. I will continue with questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services on the issue of the TTC. Madam Speaker, tenacity and perseverance are very much skills to be admired at the ministerial level. That’s one of the reasons I had confidence in making sure that Mr. Miltenberger went in there and I still have confidence in him and his capacity. You know something, Madam Speaker, flexibility and having an open mind are qualities that are equally important in having a Minister there and this is where I would like to see the Minister demonstrate this quality.

The...

We have established a convention and a belief as part of the process of consensus that we will work with each other on significant changes like this. I will say it again and again and again, we were denied the access, involvement and input to this kind of process in this decision. It was, indeed, something that was out there as a very viable idea. We came back into this House just last week and we find out that this is a done deal. This is where this government has let us down and it’s letting this community down. The government must rescind its desire or its program to move this facility...

Madam Speaker, we really are at a standoff at this point. We must come back to the whole premise of when a major change is made to a piece of social delivery or piece of social delivery infrastructure, that there are significant consequences. The Minister will not accept this, but we are seeing and hearing an overwhelming body of information and very sincere expressions from professionals about what this will cause. Madam Speaker, our point to the Minister has been to show us the plan, to show that the department understands and is knowledgeable about the consequences. We have not seen that...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. For some great coincidence our exchange students who are in Yellowknife this year are nicely divided among all seven Yellowknife ridings. In my riding of Great Slave, I would like to introduce Mr. Scott Alltree from New Zealand who is hosted by the Miller family.

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Welcome, Scott.

Thank you. I guess in sort of percentage terms, Mr. Voytilla supplied some numbers here. I would just like to get a sense of the ratio or portion percentage-wise how much did we go over? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To return briefly, Mr. Chairman, to the diamond portion of this. The Minister just explained that regrettably it seems the majority if not all of these fees are going to non-resident, non-registered businesses that aren't based here. That is just really a shame. Even when things go wrong, you can't keep some of this money with our own professionals.

I guess what I'm seeing here, Mr. Chairman, certainly going into some avenues of business carries risk, but that, depending on how we handle it, can be extremely expensive. Receivership is a difficult and expensive way...

I appreciate the discussion, Mr. Chairman. I won't dwell on it, but along with these, as the Minister has indicated, there are receivers, there are lawyers, there are accountants, there are auditors, there are all sorts of services that are brought in. Could the Minister give us some idea of what we're spending and what we have had to spend simply on those fees and services that were required as part of this receiver process? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. That is going to give us some extra measure to be able to go out to our constituents who, as much as we as MLAs, seek to know what was behind the department's decision and make our own judgments on it.

Madam Speaker, this will be my last question on at least this go-round here. If the Minister says there are no caveats on it, then I would ask whether he would intend to table the document so that it would be available to everyone all at the same time. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Can the Minister advise the House, Madam Speaker, of the process and arrangements for ascertaining how that contractor will be selected and, Madam Speaker, how the other significant supports that will be required from the community such as the involvement of the local school authority, the local medical authority, will be built into this continuum of care that a facility like this needs? Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker, this is not good government.

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