Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When I asked questions about the nursing positions before, which I understand has been dealt with by a motion — and I don’t want to ask you about the nursing positions — it precipitated a response from the deputy minister about the maintenance officer position at South Mackenzie Correctional Centre. The deputy minister indicated that position was the one that was targeted as an affected position. I’m looking at some follow-up to the information that was provided, and not for information related to the rest of the motion.

The maintenance position was the one that is...

I have a motion I’d like to move. We don’t have that information. It would be helpful to have that information in our deliberations here to help us make decisions. Since we don’t have that information, I’m going to make a motion.

I move that this committee strongly recommends that the government take immediate action to reinstate funding in the amount of…. We’re going to have to amend the motion here. Can I just get some clarification? Let me read the motion, and then I’ll find out if that needs to be changed.

I move that this committee strongly recommends that the government take immediate...

So the savings of eliminating a vacant position for a nurse at the North Slave Correctional Centre…. Will there still be a nurse at the North Slave Correctional Centre working Monday to Friday?

To my question, I am not clear. Is there any proposed change to the support at South Mackenzie Correctional Centre for nursing support?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I actually wanted to deal with a different topic on this particular page, and I have a motion to go with the issue that I wanted to discuss. So if there are other Members who still want to partake in a discussion on this matter, I’ll defer.

Thank you. Mr. Speaker, today I’d like to talk about something that is a pet peeve of mine. I don’t know if anybody’s ever seen those pet peeve surveys, but this is a pet peeve of mine. I was reminded of it when Ms. Lee was giving her Member’s statement on cigarettes, on smoking.

Mr. Speaker, there’s only one thing that amazes me more than the fact that people smoke, and that is the number of smokers who throw their cigarette butts on the ground. Most people understand that littering is not a good thing. We teach our kids that they shouldn’t toss litter out the car window and they shouldn’t...

I’m going to be supporting the motion. And as usual, I’ll be very brief here.

I’m going to be checking the unedited Hansard for Mr. Miltenberger’s comments. He brought up a capital project in my community, referred to as the supported assisted living facility — as yet to be built — wondering if it should be profiled. Mr. Chairman, when I read the unedited Hansard, if I consider that a threat to a capital project from a Minister in my riding, I’ll be raising a point of order.

I’ll be supporting this motion. Thank you.

A while back, when the remand facility at the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre was closed, there were five positions identified for elimination but only through attrition. I’d like to know: are we still on about that, or has that been taken care of? Have enough people left to accommodate that commitment that was made at that time? I just want to make sure, with these retirements that are coming up or people who are voluntarily leaving or retiring, that those don’t somehow get categorized as those attrition positions that were kind of left over from when the remand operation shut down.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To the motion, which is to recommend that the government reinstate the $109,000 for any proposed reductions to nursing services at the North Slave Correctional Centre and the South Mackenzie Correctional Centre, I would like to say that I believe these are important services, and they are there to ensure that the corrections officers are not having to extend their time dealing with health issues. I think that the funding for them should be reinstated.

Our motion is premised on information that we received from the Department of Justice. If that information has changed...

Why was the position vacant? How long has it been vacant, and why was it vacant?