Joe Handley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have assigned the following portfolio responsibilities until such time as this Legislative Assembly appoints a new Member to the Executive Council.

The Deputy Premier, the honourable Floyd Roland, will take responsibility for Health and Social Services and will be the Minister responsible for Seniors, the Minister responsible for Persons with Disabilities and will assume lead responsibility for the homeless. I will assume responsibility for Environment and Natural Resources. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are negotiating with the federal government and with Imperial. No doubt, Imperial, or Exxon who owns most of them, make profits. That's what those businesses do. But, Mr. Speaker, we are insisting with the federal government that they work with us to conclude an agreement-in-principle on devolution and resource revenue sharing within a matter of months. Mr. Speaker, we need their commitment to do that, otherwise, as I said, our support for these kind of big projects is questionable why we're doing it. Mr. Speaker, on resource revenues we're saying agree to an...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said, we will look at it. We want to know, we want to try and figure out ourselves what is the profit on this project. If there is huge profit, then we need our fair share of it. Mr. Speaker, I don't have a quarrel either with companies making a lot of money on these projects, but we do want our share and right now we have no commitment to have our share and it becomes increasingly difficult to support these kinds of projects if we're not getting a fair share of the resource revenues.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Because this is a federal board, the federal Minister has the final decision on any of the members. We simply put forward nominations; he can choose to reject them if he chooses. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to say a few words on behalf of Cabinet on this matter.

Mr. Speaker, the work of Members of this Legislative Assembly is difficult. Often discussions become heated in this House and sometimes words are said that shouldn’t be said. Clearly, the remarks made by the Minster were inappropriate. However, the Minister has withdrawn his comments and apologized without reservation for his comments and has asked Mr. Ramsay in this House to accept his apology.

I hope the House can accept Mr. Miltenberger’s apology and look beyond this issue to the hard work he does as...

Mr. Speaker, we don't have a formal policy that any staff member can be phoning the Minister's office directly, but there is a chain of authority within an organization and normally we would expect people to talk to their supervisor. But, Mr. Speaker, certainly all employees have an opportunity speak to their MLA, and if their MLA happens to be the Minister, then, of course, they do that as well. But I don't think any Minister has ever said that I will not speak or I will not be open to any person in the public, whether they work for government or whoever they may work for. We are open to...

Mr. Speaker, the work of this board is very important. It’s very important that we have representation on it. In order to fill that position and get on with the important work the board has, I have agreed with the Minister that we will provide him with more than one name. If he feels he doesn’t want to just rubberstamp the one name we give him, we will give him more names. Mr. Speaker, I appeal to all the Members of this House to think about other names that we could put forward to get this board fully represented and on with its important work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I can assure Members that we have been pressing the Minister for several months now and, as I say, it is the Minister’s discretion, the final decision, I should say, on our nominations as well as nominations from other parties including aboriginal organizations. So he has that final say. Mr. Speaker, in order to resolve this, we recognize the need to have someone and have that position filled. In order to move ahead with this, we have agreed with the federal Minister to give him more names. If he can’t make a decision based on the names we have provided, we will give him more...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize one of my constituents. It was an oversight yesterday, Arlene Hache. I didn’t recognize her yesterday.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A discussion paper is being prepared and will be ready for distribution this fall. I don't have an exact date, but it's being handled through Human Resources. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.