David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What is the Minister’s strategy for dealing with the lowering of the supp reserve to $10 million, given the fact that you’re going to let departments continually come back for more money? How are departments going to be kept in check so that the $15 million that was dispersed or is going to be dispersed again next year to the departments, how are we going to maintain that departments use that money for what they say they’re going to use it for and we’re not overspending our supp reserve by eight to 10 million dollars? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I know my colleague Mr. Abernethy was talking about departments and things that they could anticipate coming in the years I’ve been here, and years previous to that, my knowledge of collective bargaining with the UNW is something you can almost script. Every three years you’re going to have negotiations. You can go back and find out what you spent your money on three years ago and budget accordingly. I’m not sure why the $276,000 shows up via supplementary appropriation. I think it should be something the department budgets for every three years. They...

I don’t know if that necessarily answered my question. I think the Premier is right in one regard. When you do have strong personalities in a system like we have today, just because we have the system today doesn’t make it right. But if you have seven individuals on that side of the House and you’ve got two or three Members that pretty much run the show and others aren’t allowed to express their opinions or speak their mind, that causes problems. Like I said earlier, we want to be able to work together. When we go to P and P in the morning every Member is allowed to speak their mind. When we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Premier. It gets back to my Member’s statement where I talked about the state of consensus government in our Territory. The two events that I spoke of in my Member’s statement, both the proposed changes to the supp health benefits and more recently the initiative on board reform, these two issues just bring to light that there are problems with our system of government here in the Northwest Territories. I mentioned the fact that Regular Members need to form consensus. When we come to work every day that has to happen. But in Cabinet that...

We call ourselves and our system of government consensus. But then why does Cabinet act and behave like a majority government and think like a political party, throwing blind devotion behind the Premier and the Deputy Premier.

I personally don’t think it’s too late to save our system of government. If we don’t take the necessary steps to improve it, party politics will arrive in our Assembly. Many may say it’s already here with Cabinet having no genuine free votes, Cabinet solidarity, and Cabinet Ministers unable to speak their mind. If we had true consensus government, Mr. Speaker, what...

I know the Housing Corporation is under the purview of the EDI committee and ECE is under the Social Programs committee, but to my recollection the work, the review that was supposed to be done that the Minister is talking about, between both departments, we were supposed to get that work I think it was back in February. A year ago. We still haven’t got it, which would suggest to me that there are some problems there. I don’t know why we haven’t got it yet. I’m not on the Social Programs committee so maybe the Social Programs committee members that are here would know if that information has...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have just a quick question on this page. I am wondering if the Housing Corporation and the government has given any thought to trying to take the Housing Corporation a little bit further away from government, a little bit more arm’s length. I have been thinking about this because housing is political. It is a political beast and constituents come to their MLAs and they want MLAs to intervene on their behalf whether it is arrears or other issues related to housing. I have given this some thought. It seems to me if you take the Housing Corporation as it is today and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to move an amendment to the motion. I would like to strike out the last paragraph and include the word “laptop” after BlackBerries in the first paragraph.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think there is an issue in some of our committee rooms with technology and there is going to be a cost associated with getting committee rooms up to speed with Internet connections and whatnot. I am not sure if this motion speaks to Members using laptops without Internet connections or with Internet connections, because the two are very different things.

I know committee rooms may only have one live Internet connection, so is it the first Member through the door that gets to plug their computer into that live Internet connection or are we going to do any further work...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It wasn’t my intent to insult any of the Cabinet Ministers over there. Completely not my intent. That was not my intent and I apologize if some Cabinet Ministers took that the wrong way. What I’m saying is we have the ability on this side of the House. Some of you have served on this side of the House. We share ideas. We respect one another. When we come into this forum we can’t do that. There’s no free-flowing dialogue because Cabinet Ministers cannot speak like Regular Members. What I’m saying is we need to take a look at how this government operates and we need to...