Sandy Lee

Can I ask the Minister to commit to…Could I ask the Minister whether there’s any intention under this legislation to give workers a chance to have a say on who that third medical opinion will be?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a number of visitors I would like to recognize. First, two teachers from St. Joe’s who are spending part of their summer holiday to visit us. I don’t think we could see from this side, but it is my constituent Rosemarie Critch and her friend Linda Nickerson.

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I would also like to recognize my family, my mother-in-law who is visiting from England, Peggy Radcliffe; my brother-in-law, Steve Radcliffe, and my other half, Mr. Dave Radcliffe, who is also a teacher.

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Thank you. I take that to mean that somebody…So if there is no condition change on the person…Oh dear, this is so hard. If somebody had a back injury and one doctor says no, it’s not caused by work and another doctor said yes, it’s caused by work, the WCB medical advisor says we don’t think it’s caused from work. Another doctor says you have an injury and it’s caused by work and it should be compensable. You go to a third party and the third party agrees with the worker’s side. No change in condition, no medical opinion or anything. There is no change in the worker’s condition, but you...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak today in support of the new program called The Rock Skateboard Ministry established by the SideDoor Youth Ministry. Mr. Speaker, this program currently has the youth of Yellowknife at the arena for the summer months and want to run this program year round. They are looking to secure a portion of the government warehouse building to continue this ministry and are asking for this government’s and city council for support.

Mr. Speaker, they have already had a very good response to the program with over 350 youth attending the King of...

Thank you. Before I move to subsection (4), I have a question on subsection (3), which speaks to the capacity under this clause to go to a third opinion. It says in there in 27(3) that this resolution is binding, so whatever the third opinion is, it’s binding to both parties, subject to new medical evidence. So I have a question about what that new medical evidence means exactly, because it could happen in either case. You could have binding resolution on a conflicting medical opinion where both the medical advisor, WCB and the worker agree to a…Let me just ask first whether they have to...

Thank you. Very conveniently, section 27 deals with the question I had in mind and it's in regards to conflicting medical opinion situations. I'd like to ask either the Minister or whoever on the panel, Mr. Wright, just to explain to the people out there how does this section address situations of conflicting medical opinions.

I realize that we may be…I guess the lawyers here might want to err on the side of caution and we don't want to be too definitive in interpreting this clause. But I think Mr. Wright has basically said what I was looking for, but I'm just going to confirm this again in my remaining seconds. Am I right in thinking that if, say, this clause requires the workplace to be a dominant clause, dominant factor of the injury or the disease, your burden of proof would have been lot higher than what we have here, which is a little lower but higher than trivial cause? I could look in that step-by-step...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do appreciate that we have to go against sort of the established machinery of that case law interpretation, but in his legal opinion, would section 1.1 make any difference whatsoever in interpreting that clause that’s interpreted that way everywhere over time? Can we do anything differently here? Are we doing anything differently because of that? Thank you.

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.