Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. May I seek unanimous consent to finish my paragraph? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We, as a committee, have filed a very extensive report on this bill in the House a couple of days back. It is as a result of a quite extensive public hearing process. We appreciate the Minister bringing forward a number of amendments that he feels would address some of the issues that were raised in the report. However, Madam Chair, I need to state, as committee chair and as a member, that there were a number of issues that were raised in the report that would not be, in our opinion, able to be addressed by way of amendments. So, for that reason, and specific to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to just take a few minutes to give my thanks to many people who make it possible for me to be here today. First of all, I would like to thank my constituents for giving me their trust to serve them as their MLA for the last eight years. It is an honour like no other. I don’t think there is any other…I don’t even think you can call this a job. It is something that is possibly a democratic system that we have where on election day, the people across the NWT go out and put an X next to the names of people that are here. It is a complete...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are to the Minister of WCB and it’s in following up to the commitment he made last week in answer to my question that he would provide us with stats on the long outstanding cases from WCB, how much progress the WCB has made since the introduction of the policy in April. With a day remaining, I have not heard anything from the Minister and I’d like to check up on him, with him, before the time runs out. Thank you so much.

Okay. For the record, I'd like to say that these changes were supported by not only the PSAC, UNW and NWT Federation of Labour, but also the NWT Construction Association, and that was, I think, mentioned in the report. Let me just say this again. From what I understand, if someone gets injured in a workplace, if they could prove that that happened in the workplace, doesn't have to prove but there's enough through medical opinion or whatever that the work had something to do with it. That doesn't have to be dominantly work, but if work had something to do with it, then you will be...

Could I get the Minister to commit that section 92 will be read in context of section 1.1? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is a clause on causation, which obviously is one of the crucial components in this new legislation. As was indicated in the committee report, there have been amendments to this legislation to make the standard of proving cause as being something that’s dominant in the workplace. I’m wondering, regarding dominant causes of workplace injury, and I’m wondering if, for the interest of those who are listening to this, the Minister or his staff could explain how this would be implemented in the real cases? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a question on clause 92 which deals with the presumption in favour of injured workers and this is a very important and often controversial component of the workers’ compensation legislative system. I know the workers who go through the claim process, some of them feel that they’re not always treated with the presumption in favour of them as injured workers, and probably the workers in the system don’t agree. Anyway, I would like to ask the Minister how this section will be different than what was in place prior to this legislation in a specific term. I don’t...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Without having had a chance to look at the letter I don’t know how final it was, but listening to Mr. Premier I think that there might be a wee little tiny bit of room open there. So could I ask the Premier, could I take his answer to mean that he’s encouraging his department to work with this group to see if there are any other avenues and perhaps he could commit to asking the MACA department to look at that further? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I read that subsection 2(2) and it says, “they shall seek the opinion of another medical professional who specializes in the area of the conflict.” It says they shall seek but it’s not clear to me whether the medical advisor or the worker will have the same say on who that third medical opinion should be. Is that the correct way to do that? Is that the sound medical opinion to say that both parties have equal power? It doesn’t say they have to agree.