David Krutko

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, as the Member mentioned, there are a lot of challenges we are facing, especially in the Sahtu communities. I think, as a government, we have to ensure that we are able to meet the challenge, but I think that one of the more important things is that we have to start to either put more dollars into the building of housing or else ensuring that we have a strategy in place. Right now, we are developing a northern housing strategy in conjunction with the Northern Strategy. But in order to meet the demands, like I mentioned, we need 188 houses on the ground just...

Thank you, Madam Chair. To my left is Mr. Jeff Anderson, chief financial officer; on my right is the president of the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Fred Koe.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe we need an operational review. It is a costly endeavour and the monies that are spent to operate the workers’ compensation come out of the employers' and employees' pockets. I think that we have to realize that, and also realize that they do an audited statement every year, through the Auditor General of Canada. Also, they have concluded a review in 2002 in regard to a special audit that was done on the operation. If the Member would like, I can get him a copy of that audit that has been done on the operations in 2002, to show him exactly how that review was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is right; we do have a high number of accidents or incidents in the workplace, but because of the workers’ compensation system, it numbers somewhere about 3,000 individuals a year. We do have an appeals process and I think that because we have seen a change in attitude, we’re starting to see more people coming back with appeals that have been appealed in the past and also allowing the Appeals Tribunal to do their job. I think one thing that we’ve seen in the past is because there was a major backlog of the number of cases, we have put more...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just with regard to the Member’s question, I think it’s important that we start getting communities more involved in the program side of housing. I think I mentioned earlier that one of the ways we’re doing that is we’re working out universal partnership agreements with bands or Metis locals to hire people to explain the programs and be the contact person in that community to do the follow-up with the different regional staff. I know my office is always open to Members. If you do have concerns from your constituency or your ridings on a particular individual or client...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, these are mobile homes, not trailers. These are actually physical homes that people live in and I think it’s important to realize that since this program has come out, we have identified 42 units; 22 the first year and 20 this year. But I think because of the publicity that this program has got, I think it’s helped us in attracting other communities who are now calling us asking us if they can get these units in their community, such as the hamlets in different communities. They are calling us, we don’t have to call them and I think because they realize...

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I would like to thank the Member for his concerns and issues because I think it is important to realize that we can’t develop social housing, because social housing has been discontinued since 1992. It’s almost 13 years ago that the federal government got out of building social housing. I believe that is one of the main problems that we are running into in the Northwest Territories, because that program is not delivered anywhere in Canada anymore. Because of that, we are having such a housing crisis, not only here in the North, but also all across Canada...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the workers’ compensation system we have in the North is probably one of the best we have in the country. It does meet the requirement of having no-fault insurance, so no one will get sued, but also to ensure that the workers, when they do get injured in the workplace, are taken care of. That is the whole idea of the regime and also having an appeals systems so those members who are rejected, when they put an application forward on whatever grounds, have an opportunity to appeal that decision.

In order to allow for that independence, they do a rigorous...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I stated earlier, we do have a 90 percent rate of processing applications. Again, I think because of changes in legislation, we are now dealing with a federal corporate ruling which dealt with a chronic pain disorder, which is now being diagnosed as part of the compensation system and because of the Supreme Court decision, we’re starting to see more people coming forward with those types of complaints where before they were rejected. Now that we have this new decision made by the Supreme Court, people are coming forward again, filing their appeals on...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the legislation that I talk about in regard to the draft legislation does address the issue of the appeals process. We realize there are some concerns in that area and in order to make it work better, we have to make those changes. So we are addressing the area of the appeals because of concerns, but we’re also trying to have a transparent system through the new legislation to ensure that when people come forward and they have an appeal, that the appeal is being heard and that we’ve responded to it without having legislation that is overlapping between the...