Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are on the Premier’s statement yesterday about the negotiations going on about the concession agreements and the project financing of the Deh Cho project. I think the questions could be answered by either the Premier or the Minister of Transportation. Mr. Speaker, I just want to preface it by, obviously even though I support this project 1,000 percent, it has to stand on its own leg and make a sound business case. But business case for public business is a little different than a private business, which is profit motivated. A bridge like this...

Maybe our Law Clerk can help me with this. It was committee’s understanding that the Law Society was formally contacted. I think it’s important that they have a say in this. It was our understanding from somebody that this was communicated to them and they had no objection to this amendment. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Austin. One of our witnesses, Ms. Peterson, when she appeared before us, she gave us an example. I think in her view, even if you have separate offices in legal services, that is not any different from any law firms and many large law firms and even law firms in Yellowknife where they have offices in Yellowknife, Vancouver and Toronto. There are lots of branch offices here where they are headquartered elsewhere. Even if a lawyer has a file in Yellowknife, a lawyer employed by that same law firm based in Vancouver would not be able to take on the other side of the same file...

…ever so conscientious, and we’ve done travels on this bill and others. You know, this bill is very interesting and it is trying to address the larger public interest goal of making access to legal services and legal counsel more available to those residents in the NWT who qualify for legal aid. I think everybody is aware of the shortage of lawyers not only here but everywhere in Canada, and we have heard over the years about the serious backlog in family law files and criminal files, which are the other…Probably the criminal don’t have as much of a waiting list as family files but, at any...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to report to this Assembly that the Standing Committee on Social Programs has reviewed Bill 1, An Act to Amend the Partnership Act; Bill 2, and Act to Amend the Condominium Act; and Bill 3, An Act to Amend the Legal Services Act, and wishes to report that Bills 1, 2 and 3 are now ready for Committee of the Whole.

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Sahtu, that Bills 1, 2 and 3 be moved into Committee of the Whole for Thursday, May 10, 2007. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I understand we need to have front-line care in the communities and also the argument is that because a lot of our cancer care and even surgeries are done with Edmonton Capital Health Authority that we are addressing it that way. But you could switch that. The reason we are relying on them is because we have been without a second surgeon for a long time. We are having a hard time recruiting that. We have a waiting list on surgeries for hips and joints. We haven’t had a full staff diagnostic imaging in a long time. So I think it is important for the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement, I raised a number of issues. I want to start with one of them today. The question is about the announcement that was made on the wait times by the federal government and his territorial counterparts about a month ago in the Great Hall. I would like to ask the Minister of Health a question about how that proposal, in terms of how it relates to the North, has come about. The federal statement stated that the wait times would gear towards five categories. Some of them being cancer treatment, diagnostic imaging and surgical...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, keeping up with the past convention, I hosted a pre-session constituency meeting at Range Lake North School this past Monday and I was pleased to spend the evening listening to and sharing information with the valued members of my constituency whom, although few in number, had a lot of advice and assignments for me to work on during this session and beyond, Mr. Speaker, and as we begin our short session today I'd like to tell you about some of them.

They would like, Mr. Speaker, me to keep working hard to resolve the intolerable situation surrounding the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to nurses, nurses don’t do surgeries. Surgeons do surgeries and they don’t do diagnostic imaging. Primary health facilities, while they are important, don’t do these either. These are important wait times. I beg to differ with the Minister in that we do have our own problems here and wait times to deal with. First of all, I would like to ask the Minister to commit to giving us information as to how he compares us with the rest of the country. I would like to ask the Minister to commit to providing that information and also his...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, like all things we deal with, all these things work in a continuum. We can’t isolate one issue at the exclusion of all the others. While we need to put resources into primary care in communities, that is important, but we still have to address the wait time issues in areas that the federal government talks about; in particular, diagnostic imaging. We have a long line-up at the territorial hospital here to get X-rays, C-scans, unless you go to emergency. You may have to wait days or a couple of weeks just to get an X-ray on your back about what is wrong...