Robert Villeneuve

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of questions for the Minister of Justice, the Honourable Brendan Bell. I have a couple of questions that I asked him in the last session with some community concerns with the Community Justice Program. I know that the funding, or the lack of funding, for community justice workers and justice committees is seriously inadequate in a lot of the communities. With the rollout of the Youth Justice Act, it has put an extra strain on these committees because some of the caseloads have doubled because, in the Act, it clearly states that the youth...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to seeing the recommendations of that report. They probably deal with a lot of board representation and community health services, medical travel and stuff for the smaller communities. I just want to make a point to the Minister that I know the authority my communities deal with, the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority has a very big plate and a lot of the small community issues get lost amongst this big banquet of issues that they have to address on a daily and a monthly basis. I just want to ask the Minister if this report, when it does...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, health and social services, as we all know, is a very important and sensitive issue in our smaller communities. When a community’s concerns on health are brought to the attention of a health authority that is not directly involved with the dynamics of the community on a day-to-day basis, sometimes these issues lose some credibility and their sense of importance.

When issues are brought up in a boardroom that comprises of a majority of members who have not lived in a small, remote, aboriginal community and are not aboriginals themselves, many of these unresolved...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am glad I got a commitment from the Minister for that. I look forward to seeing what gets presented to Social Programs.

Still sticking with the medical travel issue, the issue with medical travel escorts has always come to my attention, also. I know the patients themselves don’t really have much say in whether they want an escort or not. It’s basically up to the nurse practitioner or the community health representative to make the call on the escort and then people are coming here, travelling, they are distraught, they don’t know how to handle a lot of the inquiries...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to thank the Minister for his opening comments. I think this year's health budget is basically going to deliver a lot of good changes that people were asking for and have been asking for for a long time.

I just want to mention something about the medical travel concerns that seems like everybody has got an issue with. First off, I know we had the telehealth line and the toll-free nursing line available on a 24-hour basis. I know it's been mentioned to the department before, of whether they're going to establish a medical travel toll-free line that people...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just to top up what the Minister was actually alluding, to I realize that there are different caseloads in the communities and should be addressed as such, and funding should go to the communities that are very busy. Just to let the Minister know, different communities have different crime rates. Some communities have low crime rates. Therefore, their justice committees just don’t have the work cut out for them as a lot of my communities do with high crime rates and high unemployment and stuff. What is the rationale in this department’s way of thinking? Why do we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let me just ask the Minister a question about the report itself. I didn't see the terms of reference for the report, but I want to ask the Minister, does the report, is it a territorial-wide community report, or is this more specific to my constituency which raises the issue of getting the report in the first place? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I just want to welcome the Minister and it’s good to see Jeff and Fred again. It’s funny that the Minister, in his last sentence, said these are the same issues he has been hearing for 10 years. That just drives home one of the points that all Members have been raising today with the Housing Corporation. There are many issues and outstanding housing concerns that are just so long ongoing that the regional staff or the headquarters staff have pretty much earmarked these ones, flagged them and just put them in a file in a box in the closet or something and hopefully they...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I'm just trying to figure out, people that are in public housing are usually in unstable situations, Mr. Speaker, and I think anybody that's in public housing considered stable is somebody who's unemployed permanently and never wants to work and only wants to pay the $32 a month. That's my picture of somebody being stable in public housing. But I just want to ask the Minister if their housing subsidy application is not filed, what are their options? Say the income support worker couldn't make it into the communities. She fell ill or something and she missed...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I know that, later on today, we will be reviewing the NWT Housing Corporation’s budget in detail. I would just like to make a few comments about the housing situation and, in particular, my constituency of Tu Nedhe. In general, many of my constituents still have some long-outstanding housing issues that they simply refused to let this department sweep under the rug. These situations and predicaments have hindered improvements to lifestyles, cause undo hardship and resulted in many family breakdowns within my constituency.

Mr. Speaker, these things the...