Jane Groenewegen

Thank you. I will ask the Sergeant-at-Arms, please, if he would escort the witnesses to the witness table.

Minister Dent, for the record, could you please introduce your witnesses?

Clause 16.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Minister indicates that this government doesn't have money to throw around and we don't have enough time here today for getting me started on that topic, where we actually throw money around. He brings up the teacher/pupil ratio, something dear to all of our hearts, but that's still no excuse for the limited and measly, meagerly support that's gone into support for arts and culture in the Northwest Territories. Mr. Speaker, as a former colleague of ours in this House, Mr. Picco, used to say, a strategy without any funding is just a slogan, and I don...

I would like the Minister to assure us, and I don’t know what I can really stake on that assurance because I stood in this House and told the Minister that we had a problem about this previously. He categorically denied that that problem existed. He subsequently found out it did exist and now I am asking for those assurances again anyway. I would like to ask the Minister what assurances can he provide to us that now, going forward, we have a system that works and is not going to see managers and staff spending inordinate amounts of time trying to sort this out? Is he confident now today...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although he’s not my constituent, I’d like to recognize Patrick Scott in the visitors gallery today, a long-time northerner who’s made many contributions to the North, not the least of which are his six wonderful children.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to report to this Assembly that the Standing Committee on Governance and Economic Development has reviewed Bill 6, Workers’ Compensation Act, and wishes to report that Bill 6 is now ready for Committee of the Whole, as amended and reprinted. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thought the Minister was going to run the clock out. My question is for the Minister of Transportation. Mr. Speaker, I have written to the Minister and the deputy minister. I do thank the Minister that he took the time to attend in Hay River to look at some of the transportation infrastructure. As everyone knows, Hay River is the transportation hub of the North, and so our transportation infrastructure is very important to us, as it is to any community. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister what the plans are with respect to the deficiencies that have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have to assume that the Government of the Northwest Territories is a pretty sophisticated client and we have spent, as I said, a very large amount of money on ensuring that we have a modern and efficient system in place. I would like to know what is the Minister doing to protect the financial interests of this government with respect to the purchase of this and all of the subsequent costs that have occurred by its failure to function properly? What is this Minister doing to, I suppose even assess what those costs are, and to protect this government...

Perhaps if we had a plain Jane program with a plain Jane Minister running his department, we would work a little better. Anyway, Mr. Speaker, with respect to the Minister’s statement today, one of the problems that are still causing a great deal of strife for departments and for managers is the Absence Management module has now been shut off. This is summer holidays. This is when people wanted to input leave requests. This is when managers wanted to approve leave requests. This is when people needed to know what their leave totals were. If there was ever a time that we needed this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the problems experienced by the Department of Human Resources. It does seem to be an endless list. I don’t purport to be any expert on the subject of software for human resource applications, but I know that our government has spent millions of dollars to ensure an effective and efficient system. That is definitely not what we have today.

Oracle, or the system formally known as PeopleSoft, is what is known as an enterprise resource planning system. There are several problems related to these ERP systems. In general, they are...