Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my great pleasure today to recognize a representative of one of the organizations for the No Place for Poverty Alliance, Ms. Julie Green, director of community relations for the YWCA. Welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to bring attention today to a very slow moving government project. That project is the development of an Anti-Poverty Strategy.

As early as February 2010, I began urging the government to recognize the need for a government-wide comprehensive Anti-Poverty Strategy and to take action on it. I’ve made statements in the House many times since. To its credit, the government has taken some action in the last year and a half, but it’s been too little and taken much too much time to get going.

A motion was passed in this House on February 11th last year which called for...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, want to express my appreciation for this motion coming forward. I feel really strongly that any funds within the Heritage Fund belong to the people of the NWT; they don’t belong to the Assembly. I think that there needs to be a certain amount of public oversight on the fund itself and the reporting of the fund needs to be monitored to a certain extent by the public. I appreciate the recommendation from the Minister, and it was accepted by committee, that we don’t need an arm’s length body to monitor the fund in the first period while we are not withdrawing...

Thanks to the Premier for that. That was my next question, was relative to the transition document from the government. I’m really pleased to hear that it’s in there. It’s really unfortunate that we couldn’t have had greater work done in the 16th Assembly. What kind of a priority is assigned to the development of an Anti-Poverty Strategy in the transition document to the 17th Assembly? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Premier and I’d like to ask some questions with regard to the Anti-Poverty Strategy or the development of, or maybe I should say lack of development of.

I’d like to ask the Premier initially if he could advise, give us -- the House -- an update or advise the status of the report on the Anti-Poverty Strategy discussion paper. Thank you.

At a press conference this morning the alliance launched its anti-poverty election tool kit. They will be asking each candidate in the October 3rd election to take a pledge to make an Anti-Poverty Strategy a key priority for the 17th Assembly. The Alliance will then publish the results for voters’ consideration.

I have to commend the Alliance for their election initiative and fully support their stand. The development of this strategy must be a top priority for the next Assembly. It’s an issue which will not go away. Our residents need it. Our NGOs and local governments want it and are asking...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of brief comments here. I have felt for quite some time that the inability of either standing committee and/or the general public to have any input on the development of regulations is a fault with our system, and I think the consideration by Caucus of establishing a process convention to refer regulations, not all of them because there certainly is some legislation that will not require extensive regulations, but there certainly are some pieces of legislation which should allow for input from standing committee and the public into the development of...

Thanks, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Premier. I would sincerely hope that all candidates in this upcoming election will seriously consider whether or not they can pledge to make the Anti-Poverty Strategy a top priority in the next Assembly, should they end up here.

To the Premier, I don’t know whether he can answer this question or not, but since the paper has just gone to standing committee, can he give us any indication of when the paper might be released to the public? Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. Yes, I will be happy to see it when I can see it. I guess I would like to ask the Minister: can he give me a date when I can go to the website and see a Leave the Phone Alone pledge access site? Thank you.

All the objectives of the department are certainly laudable. I certainly support them. In all of the words in the Minister’s response, I really heard very little reference to the Leave the Phone Alone pledge campaign. In March of this year, again the Minister made a statement on the Year of Road Safety. He mentioned the pledge campaign as one of the initiatives. Again there was no real detail to it. To this day -- I checked the website before I came down today -- there is no mention on the department’s website, there is no mention in any communications plan, that I can find for the department...