Daryl Dolynny

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the Minister’s comments here, but it appears that we’re still moving very slowly on this serious issue.

We can only assume that hiring the Child Welfare League to help the GNWT with the action plan and the numerous and new enhanced activities that we’ve heard and been proposed will cost considerable money. Yet it appears that no new additional resources have been used or put forth in the budget, which suggests failure.

Can the Minister indicate how realistic is it that his department is able to accomplish all this with no new investment? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the details on the disbursements. If these amounts of monies, again because we collect the money, we rebate the portion to the federal government, so the bulk of that money stays within the GNWT. It sounds like we’re paying this money quarterly. Where does this money sit in our books in terms of as it’s waiting for these quarterly disbursements and are we getting any interest on that money? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to follow up to a response earlier today to some of my general comments with respect to active positions. The fact remains that the numbers have not changed from fiscal 2014 to the proposed budget of 265 total employees, and if I look at the disbursement of jobs per allocation of regional allocation, nothing has changed. Everything has stayed the same. There may have been transfers in and out, but the actual numbers are still whole.

Again, if my math is correct, this increase for this category, as I said earlier, is 7.7 percent, and we heard from the deputy...

So, we’re at 50 percent on that question.

According to the department’s Building Stronger Families Action Plan, in response to the OAG report, it states on page 7 that a forum of directors of social programs will be responsible for implementation.

Can the Minister indicate why are not the assistant directors, in conjunction with the director, responsible for implementing the action plan? Why the watered down approach in response to such a serious issue? Thank you.

I’m sensing very tempered, cool, not warm waters on the response to this question. I’m just going to leave it as is.

I see opportunity. I see opportunity for some groundwork to look at our most vulnerable, our working poor. This is a great opportunity. I see that the department can do some groundwork so that when we look at the transition opportunities into the 18th Assembly, this Assembly would be known historically for laying the foundation. That’s all I’m asking and I’ll leave it at that.

My next question on this category has to do with the significant decrease in the amount of net fiscal...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just so I can get some clarity, again, we know that Sun Life has had some issues with adjudication. Can the department give us some indication for the last two years, let’s say, how many adjudication audits have been done on the Sun Life submissions?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As many are aware, the 2015 Canada Winter Games are in full swing in Prince George, British Columbia, and our NWT delegation is in sizzling hot pursuit of medals. But it’s just not medals that our athletes are competing for, but for the chance to do their best and celebrate in friendship through sports.

Many have been following the opening ceremonies and some of our early events that are being featured on Facebook, Twitter and through media coverage, and I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, I am very proud of our delegation. So proud that I want to do a shout out to my Range...

I guess the question is: Does the government see the potential benefits of increasing the amount of wage dollars going to those most vulnerable on the low end of the wage scale? Does the government or the department not see a benefit of not only raising the average wage, which we did, but also take a look at a combination of also putting more dollars in people’s back pockets by adjusting the cost of living tax credit?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the Minister for replying to the majority of my opening comments. On page 148, it does list in the taxation column both for tobacco and fuel tax, we see a very modest and actually very insignificant I call it decrease in the revised estimates to the main estimates. In fact, it’s almost statistically insignificant when you factor in an audit component.

That being said, if we look at the statistics we are getting from the Department of Health which clearly indicates that the smoking rate is going down, the number of smokers is going down, so just by virtue of...

So, how will Members know the findings of this audit? Thank you.