Jane Groenewegen

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don’t know if we need a bridge, I don’t know if the Deh Cho Bridge is a priority of northerners. I suggest that we have some more consultation to ascertain the answer to those questions and I’m not sure if we’re not just jumping in because this Legislative Assembly is coming to a close. I don’t know what the panic is all of a sudden on the bridge, but I want to say I do support the Deh Cho Bridge myself because it’s good for Hay River and it’s close enough to Hay River that there’s going to be some economic activity for Hay River around the...

Thank you for that, Mr. Speaker, and thank you that Members will be kept informed, but what about the members of the public service whose information has been put out there? Their privacy has been violated; their privacy has been breached. So thank you for keeping Members of this House informed. What are we going to do to inform the members of the public service, whose information, their private information, their social insurance number, their bank account numbers, has been out there for a period of time, whether it was for two hours or three weeks or whatever it turns out to be? What...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I cannot believe that given the amount of electronic information that this government deals with, our very expensive money that we've invested in PeopleSoft software and programming, that, my goodness, there would be no protocol established for a breach of that system. The Minister says he's going to get to the bottom of that and he also says he's going to get to the bottom of what actually happened. You know, I'm not that assured by that, given the fact that for over a month those same people in that department couldn't even inform him that there had been a breach...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think that the Minister not being informed of this by people in his department is a great sign of disrespect for him, and disrespect for Members of this House, and disrespect for the public servants. I would like to ask the Minister, what is he prepared to do in the event of this information where he was allowed to stand up and publicly make a declaration in this House to me that there was no breach and not one person from his department called him to correct the record? What is he prepared to do about it? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I fully assume that when the Minister informed us that there had been no breach of information, was what was in his knowledge at that time. However, that raises other questions. Mr. Speaker, I called the Minister a month ago. Other Members called the Minister and inquired when we had begun to hear about this breach. Then I again asked, on the record in this House, and I thought that surely after asking in the public that somebody in the Minister’s office or in the Minister’s department would have taken the opportunity to set the record straight and have the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize the Pages from Hay River South who have been serving in the Legislature this week: J.J. McKinney and Joseph Lirette. Also in the visitor's gallery today, Mr. Tom Lakusta and his son, Adam, and again my constituency assistant, Wendy Morgan. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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Thank you, Mr. Chair. I agree with this idea of using extended families for the placement of an apprehended child. I just have two caveats or concerns about that. I think that extended families should receive the same remuneration to care for that child as would a foster family that would not be related to that child. The reason being is that sometimes, just because it is an extended family, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have other obligations, a job or may need to procure childcare or support. I think sometimes it has been the thinking of the system that if you put a child with an...

Thank you, Mr. Braden. To the motion.