Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not quite sure where to address my questions today. I want to follow up on some of the questions I asked on Monday about the North American Tungsten and the Cantung Mine and some of the liabilities and securities. I’m confused whether I should be dealing with the Department of Lands or the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

I talked to the Lands Minister on Monday and I’m going to try and talk to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources today to see if I can get some clarification on who does what with regard to these liabilities.

It would seem...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We would like to deal with Bill 55, Mental Health Act, and Committee Report 25-17(5), Report on the Review of Bill 55, Mental Health Act.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Under the current Mental Health Act, the courts are the only recourse for people who wish to have a decision reviewed or appealed. This approach is expensive, inefficient and out of step with best practices elsewhere in Canada. The new act will enhance patient rights by establishing a quasi-judicial review board for hearing complaints. Applications to the review board may pertain to such matters as involuntary admissions, findings of mental competence or objections to treatment. Every application will be handled by a three-person review panel consisting of a lawyer...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. It is gratifying to know that we may be able to offload this, since I don’t think it’s our responsibility if push comes to shove.

I’m trying to determine for assessments, in general, where we’re at in terms of assessments for all the developments for which GNWT is now responsible. Have they been done, and if they are not done, when do we expect that we will have an assessment of the liabilities that we are responsible for?

If I could presume, and I will ask the Minister to confirm, would we expect that it will cost about $30 million to reclaim and to clean up that mine?

I’d like to try and understand from the Minister, about a year ago there was an announcement that we were establishing a new division in lands, a liabilities and financial assurances division. That was about a year ago, last November. I’m trying to understand the difference between who does assessments for mines of the liabilities of a mine or any other development, and who actually handles the securities. My understanding is that Lands handles...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we discussed the NWT Housing Corporation during the capital budget deliberations last week, I expressed concern about the number of public housing units available in the NWT, especially in Yellowknife. Not only do we need public housing but there’s a well-documented need for transition housing, seniors housing and disabled persons housing.

Last year the YWCA in Yellowknife, a provider of transition housing in Yellowknife, reported a lengthy waiting list for their units. This year, in spite of an addition of 18 new units at Lynn’s Place and 55 places moved from...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don’t have any questions, but I do want to make a few comments to this bill.

It is a long time coming, both the amount of time it took to get from department to committee and then the time committee spent on it, although it was compressed. I know we had a lot of hours in a short period of time.

This bill, as I stated earlier today, is very much an improvement over the current bill. I look forward to seeing how it is going to work. In terms of the concerns that we heard in our public hearings and in our travels, I think most of them have been addressed by committee. We...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a brief comment that I want to make. I’ve been pushing for eight years, not so much lately because we’ve had a change to the Motor Vehicles Act, but certainly in the 16th Assembly I pushed very hard to get some change to the Motor Vehicles Act relative to distracted driving and I’m very pleased to see that we are increasing the fines and adding suspensions. With the change that was originally made, it was almost as if people just totally ignored it and we had almost as many people driving distractedly as we had before we made the original amendment to the...

Okay, thank you. So maybe I’m confused, but it begs the question to me why are we making the amendment? I thought we were making the amendment to make it easier for people to work off their fines and their surcharges and if that’s the case, we’re opening it up so that more offenders can work off their fines and their surcharges. Am I incorrect in that? If we have more offenders working them off is that not more work for staff? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My concern when we discussed this act was similar to Mr. Dolynny and it was that there’s an anticipation that there would be a lot more people working off their surcharges through the Fine Option Program. We asked the question and we didn’t really… It was sort of the same question that was asked here already, but we didn’t really get a definitive answer. The answer to Mr. Dolynny suggested to me that there’s no expectation that the number of offenders working off their surcharges through the Fine Option Program is going to increase. I guess I’d like to get that...