Glen Abernethy

I’m actually going to Deputy Minister Guy on that one.

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Wednesday, May 30, 2012, I will move that Bill 2, Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Act, 2012, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct; there is a constant workload in this section. It’s a heavy workload in this section. It tends to build up. It comes in waves. We did put in a new, or, rather, some staff in there to help deal with the tremendous amount of backlog that existed and I’m happy to report that currently we’re down to 300 files outstanding or backlogged in this section. So there has been some significant improvement in that area. That number will shrink and swell given just the realities of employee terminations, final pays, all those types of things that need to be...

It is a section of this unit. It is six employees who are GNWT employees. The allied health recruitment unit is titled that because we didn’t want to focus just on nurses. It’s got to be for all allied health professionals, which include PT/OT, respiratory therapy, pretty much every health profession. They’re commonly referred to as allied health professionals. So we wanted the unit to be consistent with those individuals that we were trying to recruit.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and to Member Bromley. Like Mr. Guy said, we don’t have the exact date, but we will have some discussions this week and we’ll get back to Mr. Bromley with a more concrete date as to when he can expect to see and look at the suggestions of the proposal.

I’m not familiar with every detail of the Residential Tenancies Act, but I’m happy to find that out for the Member and get back to her.

The Safe Advantage Program, there are two parts to this program. The first part of any penalty or any fine comes as a result of claims history and experience, and that’s based on a formula that the WSCC has put in place that looks at the government as a whole because they consider us one employer as opposed to many employers. But they run it through the formula and we are assessed based on the number of claims in the government. If we’re over a certain threshold, we get a fine. If we’re at the threshold, obviously we don’t blow it; obviously we don’t. In 2010 and 2011 we were fined for $243...

The Department of Human Resources and the Department of Health and Social Services will be discussing this particular issue next week, as a matter of fact, and how we want to work on this particular division to improve effectiveness. Once we have those discussions and figure out what we’re going to do, I’ll be happy to share that with the Member and the appropriate committee.

With respect to the health centre, absolutely it’s something we’ll look at as alternate sources of heating, such as pellets. Absolutely. The bottom line is we need to make sure that the cost savings are there and that there’s definitely payback. Right now without all the detail – and I want everybody to recognize that we don’t have all the detail – it looks like the transportation costs of pellets could be quite high. So we need to work with all the parties to find some solutions to some of the complications that will keep the costs high. Overall we agree with what the Member is saying, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do know that a number of amendments have been made to the Residential Tenancies Act over the last couple of years, but I can’t say exactly when and if any action was actually taken with respect to rental controls or whether that was actually considered by the government. I would say that rent controls, there are as many people that support them as oppose them and it is a double-edged sword. We would have to look at that very seriously if we were to look at it. At this point in time we don’t have any plans to review the Residential Tenancies Act.