Bill Braden

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.

---Applause

Welcome, Scott.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would like to stand and speak in support of this bill, and very sincerely in support of this bill. Over my past experience as an MLA, the need for this kind of legislation has been brought to my attention in at least a couple of situations. Some of them, Madam Speaker, have been very painful or protracted situations that families have felt because family members have been incapacitated through illness or injury. The existence of this kind of legislation may have, and in these cases would very likely have, resulted in a much less painful and difficult situation for...

Madam Speaker, one of the things I will be looking for to test the Minister’s rationale and his explanation can be found in a policy document, Health and Social Services establishment policy, which was last revised in May of 1999. This policy lists seven principles, Madam Speaker, the seventh of which says, “All activities of the health and social services system should support an approach that places the needs of people first.” Will the Minister be able to bring us a rationale that is going to support this principle, this people-first principle? Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for the Minister of Health and Social Services on the issue of the announced transfer and the decision to move the TTC, the treatment centre for behaviourally disabled youngsters, from Yellowknife to Hay River. The Minister said on Friday, in relation to another issue, that it makes sense to have the services as close to the people as possible. At the risk of taking his message or his intent out of context, I really do believe that in this case there is a very strong similarity. Madam Speaker, 75 percent of the young residents...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Nahendeh, that Ministers’ statements 1-15(4), 3-15(4), 4-15(4) and 5-15(4) be moved into Committee of the Whole for consideration. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A lot of ink and time has been devoted to the issue here. It was, I think, a very useful and decisive move that the pipeline group, lead by Imperial Oil, took the decision to declare not a halt, but a major slow down to all their work, and the message in that was that it signalled that they did not have the confidence to proceed at the same rapid pace as they have had related to political and regulatory problems.

It seems that in the month or five weeks since they took that move, a lot has happened. Indeed, it focussed our minds. We got Ottawa, as the Premier said, to...

Madam Speaker, the first principle, huge principle, of this Assembly, not just the Department of Health and Social Services or any department, all of our attention should be focussed on people first. In this particular situation, Madam Speaker, I am not convinced that we are going to be honouring this principle. Will the Minister rescind this decision until a business plan is placed before us and the people of this community to prove that indeed we are going to be making this move and still honour the principles and the mandate that we have to supply this service? Will the Minister back off...

Madam Speaker, in relation to the comments about the ability of Hay River to provide the services, I am getting some very strong messages, very solid information, that indicates there would be a real ripple effect, not only for the Territorial Treatment Centre, but a number of other related services in my community in Yellowknife. So I want to ask the Minister again to justify why this decision has been made. According to media reports, the requests aren’t before this House yet, but some $3 million will be sought to pay for these changes. Why are we being asked to accept this proposal now...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In the last few days the issue of the government’s decision to move the Territorial Treatment Centre from Yellowknife has captured a lot of attention and certainly a lot of it is centred on Members of this Assembly and where we’re going with this very sudden decision by the government to relocate something that has a very significant part of this community’s and this region’s service to children with severe behavioural disabilities.

Madam Speaker, on Friday I was comforted to hear the Minister of Health and Social Services tell us in relation to a discussion about...