Jane Groenewegen

As MLAs we’ve heard the desperate cry of parents who have children that are addicted to drugs and alcohol that are turning to us as a government and saying what can you do for my child. Is there any mechanism through the Department of Social Services, through community wellness workers? Is there any tool that this government has access to that could work with these youth to encourage them to seek help, to help them self-identify as having a problem and seek help? It’s almost unbelievable to me that we have this big a problem with drugs and alcohol and yet we as a government say hey, we’ve got...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on the questions that were raised by my colleague with respect to addictions treatment facilities. Mr. Moses indicated three communities where there were buildings that he thought perhaps the government could look at for addictions treatment.

I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if the Hay River Hospital, currently scheduled for replacement within a few years, is a building that could be considered. There are a lot of young people in the Northwest Territories that are obviously addicted to drugs and alcohol. I think...

I want to say that Hay River has capacity. We have affordable homes. We have space available. We have schools that need more children in there to populate our schools. We have capacity. There’s nothing infrastructure-wise that we need to add to be able to absorb some of the government.

One of the biggest decisions that came out of the program review office was to build another $40 million office building in Yellowknife. Maybe it’s time to re-profile the program review office to analyzing department or government-wide opportunities for decentralization. Perhaps we should change their mandate. Is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As most people in this House know, Hay River is an entrepreneurial, resilient little town that has bounced back from many losses; thinking back not so far to the loss of Pine Point as our neighbours, and we have continued to hold our own. But it’s time, although we try to stay very positive, it is time to sound the alarm. I feel the pain of my colleagues from Inuvik, as well, with what they’re facing. The Mackenzie Gas Project is being deferred, it would appear. Electricity rates are going up. There are lots of things pressing in upon us, and we now look to the...

Mr. Speaker, today I want to talk about fairness. This government has an obligation to consider decentralization of government programs and services. We can’t change where some things are located, where there is a river, a lake, rare earths, diamonds, natural deposits. We can’t change where those things are located and the industry that may spring up around them, but we can certainly change the economic outlook for our regions and for our communities.

Centralization of government is a self-perpetuating problem. The more centralization occurs, the more rationale there is for more centralization...

A very strong support network of your family comes in at these times, and I think it’s very important that our children do feel the security and acceptance of their own family when these kinds of things happen in the world out there at large.

I think it’s a good message to parents that we can’t always control everything that happens to our children. I know that in my foray into politics, people have asked me, how can you stand people saying things about you? How are you thick-skinned enough to go out there and do it? And in a strange kind of a way, maybe it was because I did develop that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to today recognize two Pages from Hay River South, Angela Roy and Kateryna Staszuk, Grade 8 students from the Ecole Boreale school in Hay River, and also the chaperone, Kateryna’s mom, Michelle Staszuk.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It used to be that bullying was seen as a normal part of growing up. Kids who were bullied just needed to learn to stick up for themselves. Fortunately, our thinking has changed and we’ve become aware of how much bullying really does hurt. Even as adults, many people still carry emotional scars from what used to be thought of as just the ordinary rough and tumble of the schoolyard.

At its most basic, bullying is when someone keeps saying or doing things to have power over another person. It can take the form of name calling, threats, leaving a person out of activities...

That’s good, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my colleague Mr. Hawkins’ questions about salt on the roads and the potential environmental impact and significance of that. One only has to travel south crossing the NWT border into Alberta and see the difference on the highways to realize that what they are using in the Mackenzie County in northern Alberta does not work on the roads. If you go to the wreckers in High Level and look at how many totalled vehicles there are in that junkyard you will see how many vehicles roll on northern Alberta’s Mackenzie County highways in the winter, because...