Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are addressed to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. I’d like to follow up on a statement that I made a little while ago with regard to some sports being dropped from the 2016 Arctic Winter Games. At the time, the Minister had just come back from a meeting with some of his other counterparts. He had met with the Arctic Winter Games International Committee. There was a certain amount of publicity around the whole dropping of sports issue, and there was publicity in the media as well.

I would like to know from the Minister at this point...

Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that we want to provide the best service, but it’s not happening. The Minister referenced that the client service officers deal with their clients, they try to have a relationship with them and that’s all well and good, but in several instances now, I have had constituents tell me that their client service officer has changed and they have not been advised. They don’t know that that’s happened until they present their documents the next month for the next month’s payment, things get held up and somebody tells them oh, by the way, I’m not your client service...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement. I spoke about the difficulties that one of my constituents had in getting an income support cheque for the month of October and the delay that occurred. He applied well in advance of the end of the month, and yet didn’t receive his income support cheque until the 15th of October.

I’d like to know from the Minister at the outset, delays appear periodically, I can accept that, but I’d like to know from the Minister what length of delay...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just like to explain why this is being done here. When committee went through the Legal Aid Act we did feel very strongly as a committee that we wanted to make sure that legal aid did cover matters of child protection. So we amended a different clause to add the words “child protection” in another clause elsewhere in the bill. At the time that the bill was being reprinted it was noticed that in this particular clause, Clause 10, there was a reference to family or civil matters but there was not a reference to child protection. So child protection is being added...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The debate that committee had and the work that committee did on this bill as a whole was really interesting. There were over 10 amendments made by committee to which the Minister, over time, concurred. We found middle ground on a couple of them, but, in general, there were some very good amendments that were made which made the act a better act.

This one particular amendment or change that was suggested at committee was hotly contested. We had quite a good debate around the whole issue. Committee was split; we could not agree. I think the opening remarks by the deputy...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I’m really glad to hear that hockey will be all together. I think that only makes sense.

My last question is a statement, I suppose, a comment to the Minister. I hope that he will keep the pressure on, and with the other sports Ministers that he’s already working with that he will keep the pressure on the Arctic Winter Games International Committee, and I would ask him if he could keep us up to date as things progress in the spring.

I appreciate that maybe we haven’t asked the right questions, but I guess I have to go back to the information that we already have. Has the Minister done an analysis of all the reports which have been done over, say, the last 10 years, which would be full of answers to probably very similar questions? It makes me wonder what is so different about this particular forum, about the questions that we’re answering right now. Do we know that we have not asked these specific questions before?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I found it very timely that he chose to make his Minister’s statement today on the Minister’s Forum on Addictions. I have some questions in that regard.

I’ve been listening to the Minister over the last few weeks. He’s made some comments and he’s referenced a number of times consultations around mental health and addictions programs and the strategic plan. He’s spoken of a group that is out for consultations and it’s clear to me now, although it wasn’t before, that he meant the Minister’s...

In 2000 the Lion’s Club president said, “According to the RCMP, while we’ve been having this dance, acts of vandalism by youth 13 to 18 years old has been zero percent.” The same holds true today. To quote Mr. Finnamore one more time, “Since the Lion’s Club has been doing the event, vandalism at Halloween is almost nonexistent.”

I want to say thank you to the YK Lion’s Club for their service to our city. Congratulations on another successful Spook-a-Rama. May you have many more.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I bring this motion forward because I believe strongly that there needs to be a search and rescue base north of 60. I’ve lived in the North over 40 years, and as long as I’ve been here, Northerners have been talking about the need for a search and rescue base in the North.

All Northerners from the High Arctic to the 60th parallel are a long way from any dedicated rescue facility. Unlike southern Canada, a Northerner in distress or lost on the land is literally many hours away from the beginning of a search and rescue operation, and the further north the emergency, the...