Wendy Bisaro

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So the impact of junior kindergarten is not reflected in these education authority contributions? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we’ve heard already, Sunday is the 104th International Women’s Day. Sunday is also the 24th celebration of the NWT Wise Women Awards.

International Women’s Day is March 8th and it’s a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women, past, present and future. International Women’s Day honours the work of suffragettes who marched and fought for the right for women to vote, and the women who continue to fight for women’s rights today. In many countries across the world, International Women’s Day is a national holiday.

On International...

That’s good. Thanks.

Thanks. I guess I have to wait for the action plan. Thank you.

That then makes me ask what the $500,000 in this budget year, in the ’14-15 budget year is being used for. Is that also for wage top-up? Did that program start in this year or is that for something different?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services, and I wanted to ask some questions about the Mental Health Act. We have on our Order Paper the first reading of a bill that’s coming up. We’ve also been hearing from the Minister for quite some time that the Mental Health Act is under revision. It seems to be an extremely long time coming. Certainly, the standing committee has been looking at it for over a year. I’d like to ask the Minister, first of all, to give us an update on where the development of a new Mental Health Act is at this point.

I heard the Minister say that it’s grants for early childhood learning and child care workers. I see that written in text on the bottom of the page. Who is getting these grants? Are they going to daycare operators? Is this the money that is going to early childhood educators as a top-up in their wages? Is this the scholarship grants? I would like to know what the extra $400,000 is being used for.

Thanks to the Minister. I would think with 4,500 or 5,000 employees, whatever we have, times 12 days times an average salary per day, it’s going to be a pretty huge number. I would urge the Minister to look at that number and consider that maybe we ought to be considering the cost of absenteeism and working to bring that down somehow.

There is a report that I have encountered which says that up to 25 percent of mental disability costs directly incurred by an employer are preventable. I talked a lot in my statement about mental health and the need for us to make it easier for people to talk...

Maybe I need it to be written down. I don’t understand. I don’t know how to try again.

I understand that education authorities are funded by pupils. In the 2014-15 year they were funded by pupils and then they were reduced $400,000. Are you telling me that they’re going to funded to the max by pupils in ‘15-16 and again be reduced by $400,000? Except for enrollment, is it going to be an equal amount of funding in ‘14-15 for the education authorities as it will be in ‘15-16? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Human Resources. I want follow up on my statement when I talked about absenteeism and mental health in the workplace and making our workplace better.

I mentioned a statistic from the 2013 Public Service Annual Report and I’d like to first off ask the Minister, the statistic I mentioned was 12.3 days absence per employee in the year 2013. So, I’d like to know from the Minister, if he can tell me, what accounts for the very high incidence of days absent from work? Are there any statistics that he can give us, to me, to the House...