Bill Braden

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister is right; we have to pursue an incentive and an attractive environment to work and live in, but I will go back to what I started with. The North has had such a history of fly-in/fly-out resource development and we have worked so hard to counter that. The agreements that we put in place under considerable pressure, Madam Speaker, to get the diamond companies to comply with our desire to leave some of the product here so we could work on it is one example of how we have worked so hard to make this happen. The concerns I raise about workers now...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Those are all very good and very valid explanations, part of the foundation of our understanding. Certainly the mines collectively deserve congratulations and compliments for the investment they have made in doing that. It is truly a partnership. It continues to be a source of concern that we are seeing this trend, unfortunately, come into a reality. Madam Speaker, the cost of living and separation from friends and relatives is one of the main reasons that southern workers say they cannot move to the Northwest Territories. Now we can’t do much about the distance...

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. So to conclude, I want to make a point that there is consideration, there is a situation happening here that is going very much against some of the hopes and the dreams and the expectations that we have about developing this industry, and seeing it grow our communities and our economy. I hope that we can look at this very vigorously in the near future to assist those companies in satisfying their demands, but also for them to look at ways in which they will continue to be the corporate citizens that I think we had all expected they will be, and indeed I...

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for allowing that rather far-ranging question and for the Minister’s answer. I will come back to the theme of workers choosing not to live in the Northwest Territories. There is a concern in the city, Madam Speaker, that workers who are now residents of the Northwest Territories may look at this and say if I can get my way paid from Edmonton, I am going to move to Edmonton. I get the big salary, I enjoy the lower cost of living, I am closer to friends and relatives and other kinds of amenities. What kind of protections are there in the socioeconomic agreements, Madam...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. My questions this morning are for the Honourable Brendan Bell in his capacity as Minister of Investment, Tourism and Industry. It might be the other way around, but I hope that’s clear enough. Madam Speaker, I want to follow up on the statement I made earlier on the diamond mining industry and its impact or potential lack of impact on our long-term sustainable economy here. Madam Speaker, we have long complained about resource industries being fly-in/fly-out industries. Here, unfortunately, we have another manifestation of this with Diavik’s decision and it’s quite...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. More than a decade ago when diamonds were discovered in the Barren Lands hundreds of kilometres to the north and east of Yellowknife, we were anticipating a great new chapter in the development, the stability and the prosperity of the North Slave region in the Northwest Territories. Indeed, a lot of that has been manifested with the opening of the BHP and the Diavik mines, and we celebrate De Beers’ decision to move ahead on Snap Lake. There are a number of other prospects that could also become part of this new chapter in the North and indeed in Canada.

Madam...

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to return to item 7. Thank you.

Then in that business planning process, Mr. Speaker, what is going to be the ability of us as MLAs to work with our constituents, to represent our people and have a real tangible impact and effect on how that business plan is going to roll out and affect their families, their futures and their careers? I’m asking for some meaningful input here and I don’t know that I’m going to get it. I’m really hearing done deal. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for the Minister of Health and Social Services on the issue of the decision to relocate the Territorial Treatment Centre from Yellowknife. Mr. Speaker, the process of taking ideas or proposals from concept or potential into reality is normally quite an extensive and sometimes an even prolonged process in this Assembly. That’s one of the strengths, sometimes one of the weaknesses of consensus. But this is not a partisan House, Mr. Speaker, this is a consensus House where the minority government has to work with the majority of Members...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Part of our work here requires that we make tough decisions. Along with that responsibility and expectation, Mr. Speaker, comes the essential, the absolutely essential need in this House that we also have tough consultations to help make those decisions good ones that we can all accept and can all work with.

Mr. Speaker, in the matter of the relocation, the government now says done deal to move the Territorial Treatment Centre from Yellowknife to Hay River. We were denied that essential, that very essential expectation of coming to us and talking to us and helping us...