Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Human Resources. I mentioned in my statement about workplace bullying. I’d like to ask the Minister what we in the GNWT have to deal with workplace bullying. My first question to the Minister is whether or not the GNWT has a policy that addresses bullying in our workplace.

Sure you can. I can try. As I understand it, we have buildings. PWS has assets that need to be maintained and need to be serviced. The Housing Corporation has buildings and has assets that they also need to maintain and service. I know that the Housing Corp hires apprentices and, obviously, PWS does as well, so it would seem to me that there could be a benefit to ensure that we have a settlement maintainer in every community. Maybe we don’t need a full PY settlement maintainer for just PWS, and maybe it’s a job share or whatever, but I’m just wondering if in hiring a certain apprentice are we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We can see from the pink glow in the Chamber today that it’s Pink Shirt Day here and across Canada. For the second year in a row, NWT MLAs are acknowledging the importance of this initiative and, for the second year in a row, we’re not alone. Last year we were joined by Ms. Carrie Heldman and her Grade 5 class from N.J. Macpherson School. Ms. Heldman is back with the entire N.J. Macpherson Grade 4 to 6 student population to join us today and to highlight anti-bullying awareness along with the MLAs.

Since last year, the Anti-Bullying Campaign has gathered momentum across...

Thanks to Mr. Guy. I guess I would just like to suggest to the Minister that if it is at all possible to force that sort of training on people who are doing procurement, whether they happen to be in a department or an authority, if there is an authority in the government to force people to get that training and to have a certain level of expertise, that would be a good thing. That’s all.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, your committee has been considering Tabled Document 9-17(4), NWT Main Estimates, 2013-2014, and would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am teasing you, Mr. Minister, I hope you realize that. You do have a full memory. Okay. I’m glad to hear that we’re going to get there. I guess, in the meantime, I do have some concerns with sort of the lack of standards of letting of contracts and RFPs in various and sundry departments. What does the Department of Public Works and Services, what can they do, what’s in their arsenal to try and, I don’t want to say force other departments, but what is there that you can do to assist them to be better in their letting of contracts? I know the departments often say we’re doing it, leave us...

I will go to the Minister for a response, if he chooses.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a couple of questions here with regard to the shared procurement services. I think from the Minister’s opening remarks this is coming yet. I’d like confirmation of when that’s happening or if it is in the works and when it will be completed. My concern goes to the fact that contracts and fees are let throughout the government through various different departments and various divisions of departments. My experience has been that we don’t get the same standard of letting of contracts across the government. With shared procurement is that likely to help that...

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Committee, we are on general comments. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate anonymity. If I am reporting someone, I can’t keep my name out of it. We’ve heard a lot in the statements today and I think it’s recognized now that in order to stop bullying, we have to, as an onlooker, speak about it, we have to stop it and we have to take some action. I’d like to say to the Minister that I really hope we are seriously looking at changing the policy so that third party reporting can happen, and if that does happen, we need to guarantee anonymity. I’d like to just ask the Minister if he would agree with me that this is the change that we...