Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I can sign off on it as long as I ignored the wrath of the Minister of Finance, clearly because there would be some financial costs for us to make changes to the program. It is an issue that will have to be proposed as an initiative that would be considered as part of the budget process. The Member talked about not necessarily looking at other examples. What we are doing is trying to look for examples of how this has been done in other jurisdictions rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. So we agree that it is a good idea. We want to find ways to ensure...

Again, Mr. Speaker, I’m not sure where the Member is getting his misinformation, but Answerthink was asked on two specific occasions just before the go live date, "Are you confident that this system will run? Has it run in tests? Will it actually perform as it’s expected to run or should we wait until September?" On two separate occasions the Answerthink officials said, "No problem, this is going to work, we’ve run it in tests, we know that it works perfectly, we will see that it will run without any problems." So, Mr. Speaker, the question was put to the company. The contractor said that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In our opinion, the contract is not terminated until the product has been delivered. So I’m not sure where the Member is getting his information that the contract was terminated, because we have a contract for a product to be delivered. Until it’s delivered in a working fashion, the contract is not complete. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s hard to talk about a specific case without having all of the details. I will certainly commit to sit down with the Member this afternoon if possible to get the details and ensure that we have both the income support worker and, if necessary, the local housing authority work together to assess the situation this person might be in and see whether or not they’re getting all of the benefits that they were entitled to from this government. Thank you.

Good choice, Mr. Speaker. Thank you. Mr. Speaker, self-reliance is one of the core values of northerners and this government. It is an essential part of the vision of this Assembly. Northern people should have the tools and resources they need to function independently and to exercise self-determination.

In the summer of 2004, this government started planning for the redesign of income security programming in the Northwest Territories. Government staff undertook a review of all income security programs. They discovered that there are 17 programs in the government as a whole being delivered...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In fact, everybody did get a paycheque so there isn’t a situation where people haven’t been paid. In fact, everybody got a paycheque by the next banking day. That happened because of the work that people put in at the Department of Human Resources. I’m quite proud of the fact that people worked 23, 24 hours straight in order to ensure that the paycheques went out. Mr. Speaker, as I have said before, in our opinion, the reason that there was a problem stems back to the contractor. This government does not have the expertise to buy a program off the shelf and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that was a decision that was made by previous governments, so it’s not one I can specifically say that was a previous Premier or Minister responsible for HR because that department is new. However, it was done prior to this government coming into place in 2003. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, I will ensure there are staff that get together to follow up with the concern in the community immediately. We will work to ensure that the supports that are available right now are being provided to family members. The other thing that is important, Mr. Speaker, as I said in my statement today, the next program that we are hoping to see some work on redesign is the public housing rental subsidy. So we are expecting that that program will also now, over the course of the next year, be modified to reflect the new policy that we have in this government....

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, if the Department of Education, Culture and Employment had an independent source of revenue, it wouldn’t take very long at all. But since we have to look at all of our initiatives across government and work together to try and find which ones are the ones that are going to be funded, it is one that has to be done through the budget process. So the earliest that that is going to happen is going to be the budget that is considered in the spring of 2008. I have no doubt that the next government will look at this as a very important initiative and that the Members...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is an issue that has been brought up a few times over the last year. It is something that I have promised that the department will have a look at and try to move forward on. At this point though, we have not been able to propose any changes to our system.

We have reviewed what other jurisdictions are doing. Notably, British Columbia does have a system that recognizes the higher costs of the northern part of the province. So our intent is to, after finishing that review, looking for other examples across Canada and looking at the cost of living differentials...