Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can't answer that question directly without in fact appearing to release information that I said I couldn't. Therefore, I will say that any time we hear concerns about morale among employees, it is an issue that we want to address. The Member has raised the issue with me. I listened carefully to Ms. Lee's statement yesterday, and I think that as early as tomorrow FMB will likely deal with that situation. I hope that overall we will be able to deal with any issues of staff morale that we may have within the department, but we can't confirm that it's...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories does not record stress leave. Sick leave is provided to employees, but there is no requirement for employees to disclose the reasons for their absence. This would be an unreasonable invasion of the employee's privacy. This is well established through labour relations law and it's not permitted under the collective agreement. So I can't answer the Member's question. FMBS has advised us that we're not able to collect that information, much less disclose it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Education, Culture and Employment has been advised by Justice that the IBAs are private contracts and we do not have access to them, so we are unable at this point to determine the answer to whether or not they are compensation or cash payments as a gift or whatever, income. I am prepared again to review the entire income support program, and would be happy to discuss that with the Standing Committee on Social Programs. But I am reluctant to make any one-off changes. I would like to take the opportunity to spend some time, work with the committee to...

Do I hear Scrooge? Mr. Speaker, one way to indicate to Members…The way the program works is kind of like a glass of water. Everybody needs this much water in their glass. If you start with half a glass, then the program will top it up, but all of the water in the glass is counted. So as you have resources, no matter where they come from, they are counted as part of what you bring to the table. The income support program is offered as a…

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I'm not entirely familiar with the educational requirements for those positions. I suspect that they may not have specific training requirements to begin with. I know that in the past we have approached community organizations, bands and so on, to offer the program, because it has been seen largely as a fairly simple project to fill in the blanks on a form to determine whether or not income support is available. So I suspect that there may be more training that's required, but I can't answer the question in terms of specific training that's required.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that I could provide that information. I will check with the Legal Services Board and see how much statistical data they can provide to us and how quickly, and we'll endeavor to distribute that to all Members of the Assembly as soon as I can get it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would think that in the best of all worlds the wait would be considerably less than three to six months. It would be better if it could be only a couple of weeks, but the fact is that we can't find enough lawyers in the Northwest Territories to practice family law who are willing to take on these cases. The rate of pay for the Northwest Territories for legal aid lawyers is the second highest in Canada; only Nunavut is higher. But there are very few lawyers who are interested in taking on family law cases, and because of that there has been a growing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, in fact we could probably collect that kind of data, as long as it was for the department as a whole. The problem is that if we released it for one single unit in the department, like YCC, it would make the figures too small so that employees could likely be identified. I can tell you that we could collect that kind of data for the department and offer comparison data to other departments in the Northwest Territories for the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to recognize my constituent, Ms. Karen Hamre, as well as another Karen, Major Karen Hoeft, in the gallery today.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think that it's important that people become more aware throughout the Territories of the options that are available now for dealing with youth who have run afoul of the law. Alternative measures, such as youth justice committees, are certainly an important aspect to deal with those circumstances. I think it's important that we try to make sure more and more people are aware of these options, and that we do what we can to support the committees in their operations throughout the Territories. So we'll certainly work towards further emphasizing the use...