Bob McLeod

I can provide the following information: The top three natures of injury were: sprains, strains, and tears, 15 percent; bruises and contusions, 13 percent; cuts and lacerations, 9 percent; and the top three locations of injury were Yellowknife, 51 percent; Fort Smith, 16 percent; Inuvik, 10 percent. The majority of the incidents are in facilities that operate 24/7, 365 days a year, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

I guess that’s the approach that we want to take. We’re having these occupational health and safety standards and committees, and in conjunction with that we’ve also started focusing on our duty to accommodate. We’ve hired a duty to accommodate officer. We’ll be working very closely with WSCC so that we can work with individuals and help them get accommodated earlier rather than having to pay compensation, because, like, 62.4 percent of our costs are due to compensation. Thank you.

Whenever we attend meetings with the mining companies and mining industry, we always start off with a safety first meeting. That’s been expanded to oil and gas companies. I’m sure as part of with the opening prayer we can also start with a safety first commitment. I think that as we go forward, I really believe that as a government we’re going to have to move in that direction. Safety is going to have to be first and foremost on everybody’s minds.

As far as statistics, we have lots of statistics and I can give the Member the top three events that are causing the significant amount of claims...

There are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, WSCC operates on a three-year cycle. For the first two years of this government we were in a neutral category. The third year, 2010, there was a significant increase in the amount of claims. There are two parts to it. One is a financial penalty and then the other part is on the management practices side. The penalty that we paid is because of the increase in claims. We were able to show on the management practices side that we do have a strategy and a plan to improve our performance. By doing so, we were able to get the WSCC to acknowledge...

Mr. Speaker, one of the goals of the 16th Legislative Assembly was to create a diverse economy that provides all Northwest Territories communities and residents with opportunities and choices. Today I am pleased to highlight how the Northwest Territories tourism industry has helped us to achieve this goal.

Tourism 2010 was the Government of the Northwest Territories tourism investment plan. Under this plan the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment provided $1 million annually towards the tourism industry. We were also successful in leveraging an additional $5.3 million in additional...

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left I have Deputy Minister Peter Vician, and to my right I have Kelly McLaughlin, legislative counsel.

I do, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to introduce Bill 17, An Act to Amend the Territorial Parks Act.

It is time to modernize our legislation to match the same level of protection and security in other Canadian parks.

The proposed amendments relate to safety precautions and procedures that exist in most other Canadian jurisdictions.

These amendments will set a framework within the act that will give the department the authority to deal with specific concerns that have been identified repeatedly within our parks.

In addition to all of the criteria with regard to Safe Advantage program that we’re introducing, and I’ll just go through very quickly and I referenced several times the Government of the Northwest Territories Occupational Health and Safety Program and some of the things that we will be including are occupational health and safety management, occupational health and safety training, incident management, inspections, emergency preparedness, hazard management in Occupational Health and Safety Program evaluation. So we’ll have the structure and we’ll be working very closely with Workers’ Safety...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I’m very pleased to recognize my wife and partner of 40-plus years, Melody.

I want to recognize a number of visitors from PNWER and I’ll go through the list. Senator Cathy Giessel, State of Alaska Senate; Senator Lyman Hoffman, Alaska State Senate, and his wife, Lillian Hoffman; Mike Schaufler, president of PNWER from the Oregon Legislature; Max Black, State Legislator, State of Idaho; Mr. Jeff Morris, Washington House of Representatives; Mr. Bob Herron, Alaska State Legislature; MLA from Alberta, Ray Prins; Mr. Colin Smith representing British Columbia...