Wendy Bisaro

Thanks to the Minister. I’m not sure I can give you the info. It was pretty much I want you to know this, but I don’t think I’ve got enough detail that I can share with you to help you figure out what went wrong.

There is money in the budget for midwifery. I didn’t know if that was the Minister who said that or if that was in the budget address, and I’m very glad to hear that. My understanding is that it’s going to put, at least I’m thinking it’s one midwife, but one or two midwives in Inuvik in the 2014-15 budget year. If I could get confirmation on that, and if I could hear from the Minister...

I move that we report progress. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

---Carried

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a number of comments I want to make here, or questions, I guess. The first one has to do with the system human resource planning division. It’s been a while now since the recruitment of health professionals has been moved back to the Department of Health and Social Services. I’d like to hear from the Minister or from the department whether or not they’ve done an evaluation of how well it’s working to have that function back within the department.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just have a question here on 8-33 under family violence funding. The Family Violence Coalition a while ago put forward 19 recommendations. I know the Minister has said that the Health department is working on them.

Is the Family Violence Coalition money in this budget or is it in another department? I can never remember quite where it is. If it is in here, is there a focus on the 19 recommendations from the Family Violence Coalition? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m sorry, I lied, I do have another question that was hiding under a piece of paper.

In compensation and benefits there’s quite an increase, six and a half thousand dollars, six-hundred-whatever, from $7.8 million to $7.1 million. I have a note here, three PYs and I don’t know quite where I got that from, but can I get an explanation as to why the major increase in compensation and benefits? Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just want to highlight the second part of the motion that encourages the Department of Health and Social Services to work with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to house child and family resource centres in the schools.

Interestingly enough, some Members attended a presentation the other morning by a couple of early childhood development experts and one of the points that they raised was that putting early childhood development programs in a school encourages the family to accept school as a good place to be, encourages kids to accept school as a good...

Thanks to the deputy minister. My other question has to do with insured services and things that are not covered under insured services. I mentioned one the other day when I talked about naturopathic doctors, but the other service, I guess, that I think and I believe there was a commitment from the previous Health Minister to consider bringing this in under our insured services, and it’s bariatric surgery. I’d like to know from the Minister, first, has bariatric surgery had any work done on it to bring it in under insured services and where does the department sit and the Minister sit in terms...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have two questions here and I mentioned it in my general comments, opening comments on this department and I don’t think I got an answer from the Minister. I’m not surprised; there were lots of comments for him to respond to. But I did want to know, I did want to get an update on the efforts to establish child and family service committees. I know the department worked very hard on it over the last two years or so and I know they were struggling to get any kind of uptake from communities. I would like to know from the Minister, do we still have somebody that’s working on...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask some questions of the Minister of Finance today. I’d like to try to make some sense of the budget numbers that we’ve been given. I’d like to try to make some sense of the answers the Minister gave me and Mr. Dolynny yesterday. I’m hearing mixed messages. I’m trying desperately to understand what the Minister is telling me.

I would like to refer the Minister again to page 5-9 of the budget, the revenue summary under the Department of Finance specifically to the personal income and the corporate income tax numbers. It’s about $158 million estimated for...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, like some of my colleagues, I want to address something mentioned in the Finance Minister’s budget address, and that’s the government’s plan to attract and retain 2,000 new residents to and in the NWT over the next five years.

Youth are a very important segment of our NWT society. I hear that said all the time in this Assembly. When we’re looking for skilled workers for the GNWT, who better to serve our residents than those who have grown up here and know the issues and the culture?

The GNWT has had varying degrees of success in attracting and retaining our youth...