Bob Bromley

Thanks to the Minister for the commitment. The second question is: I understand there’s a legal translator position that will be deactivated. I believe that’s a funded position. I’m wondering what happens to those dollars. Thank you.

Actually, I was on page 27, Madam Chair.

I don’t have any desire to go on about this. I think it’s a very straightforward issue, and it’s been noted annually at budget time for a number of years. I know probably all Members have heard from our non-government organizations and the difficulties they have in meeting forced growth when they’re expected to deliver often essential government services without the resources to maintain their capacity, and at the same time, of course, they see government departments very substantially increasing their budgets for forced growth reasons. I think we need to start recognizing that they live in...

I will leave it at that, I know the Minister is alert to the issue. I will just mention that I did have a colleague do the calculation for adults, and the cost of adults in our system is about $130,000 per person per year, so again a wellness course that is successful for three people would more than pay back, theoretically, the costs that we are proposing to invest, a very modest cost this year. I think the potential is substantially more than that, though I don’t know what is being contemplated for the pilot project, but the opportunities are huge. Just a comment again. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Of course, that’s not the way it was a few months ago. That was the recent change with the federal government and it seems like we’re choosing to emulate the federal government here. The Premier is on the record, probably hundreds of times, saying we want an efficient and effective regulatory system. I note that he rarely mentions a fair system or an objective system, but I will assume that he would agree that fairness and independence are key.

How does the Premier propose to reverse these power grabs and put land and water decision-making and resource management...

I know we went through a review not so long ago and emphasized the importance of the court workers and their multilingual status, so I think they do play an important role.

Are there issues about filling these positions generally or is this perhaps there’s just a higher turnover in court workers?

Thanks for that information and I’m glad there’s some flexibility there. I think we do want to take advantage of those opportunities when we can.

With respect to grants and contributions, I see one of the items here is YWCA of Yellowknife. They are provided funding as their role as designate under the Protection Against Family Violence Act. This is sort of representative. I see the budget hasn’t changed and I have brought this up a number of times and I know a number of people have. It is a serious concern of the Standing Committee on Social Programs. To that end, Mr. Chair, I would like to...

I’m still confused about how people are identified with FASD then.

I hope the Premier is satisfied that we have devolution, that we’re talking about implementing it here, so I won’t bother to respond to that.

Intentional or not, this power shift away from public boards is happening.

Where did the Premier and Cabinet get the mandate to set things in motion this way? Did this Assembly ask them to shift power away from public boards? Did our Aboriginal partners ask them to shift power to behind the closed doors of GNWT?

I’m going to leave it at that and I certainly will talk to committee and see if there is interest to take the Minister up on his offer to do a briefing and discussion on our legal aid work.