Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that assurance. It is a very serious subject with some of my constituents. The Government of Canada, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia all have whistleblower protection. I wasn’t clear on the answer. Are we moving forward with developing legislation in the form of whistleblower protection? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am not sure that answered my question of how those pockets will be detected without sort of endangering our employees to the wrath of their supervisors. I would like a little more detail on that. How can we be sure employees will be protected? There must be an element of confidentiality or something in that to ensure that either the supervisor is not directly involved or that there is very close oversight. How will the department ensure that protection? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the mandate of the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre is to expand its operations throughout the Northwest Territories. Annual core program funding from GNWT was established 25 years ago at $30,000 and it has not changed a whit as of today. Today’s board includes members from Inuvik and Hay River as it expands its programs.

We have an incredible body of artists in the Northwest Territories, Mr. Speaker. They contribute much towards healthy communities, but with a modicum of investment such as our neighbour, the Yukon, is doing quite progressively, this...

I would just like to hear the Premier say the word environment, if I could.

---Laughter

That is all I ask, Mr. Chair. I don’t think I ever heard it. I would just like to hear it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to respond to the Premier’s sessional statement and I would like to start by building a strong foundation and hitting some common ground.

First of all, there were main points that I strongly agree with, but the first one I would like to touch on is a sustainable future means looking far beyond a four-year horizon, and that’s repeated later in the statement. I would like to challenge all Members here, all Members of the House, do we have the far-sightedness that this requires.

The second point I would like to emphasize is working together. That’s something all...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thought our Premier said he wasn’t musical. I never heard such music. Thank you.

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Thank you, Mr. Chair. I really will be brief. Just kidding. I appreciated those points that Mr. Ramsay raised and I also have questions about those migrant workers. I can’t understand our growing the economy when we can’t already have people to serve coffee in a coffee shop.

I just wanted to briefly say one additional thing. Ms. Bisaro mentioned the rate of violence we are dealing with in the North. By far the vast majority of that is violence against women. I think really a prevention way of dealing with that that we need to get more active on is gender-based analysis. I would like to see us...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Small business accounts for a large proportion of employment in both Canada and the North, but it could do much more for northerners. Mr. Speaker, we seem to focus on mega development by a few of the world’s largest corporations. The result is a raging but precarious economy that causes us to import workers from afar while local businesses suffer. The main benefit of money is pipelined to the South and local dollar gains are not embedded within a healthy society.

Small businesses provide a venue for self-sufficiency and self-reliance and ways for owners and operators to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would be happy to provide the Minister with some information on that. You can, in fact, buy it at your local travel agency as well as on the Internet.

I realize that renewable energy is new and complex. The wind does stop; the water flows seasonally and so on. Is the department, in recognition of that complexity and the need for a comprehensive approach, working to deal with those complexities right from encouraging Aurora College programs on renewable resource technology through to tying domestic systems even to the grid such as solar panels that you can mount on...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of industry, trade and investment, Mr. McLeod, and it’s to follow up on the renewable energy statement I made this morning. The Pembina Institute put out a report, “Five Years of Failure,” documenting how volunteer efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions does not work. It certainly didn’t work on its own; we need some regulation. I don’t believe we’ve ever required any industrial project to provide even one percent of their energy needs from renewable energy sources. This obviously is clearly way out of date. Is the...