Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this bill asks us to approve spending $165 million on the Deh Cho Bridge. It’s a yes or a no decision so it should be seen as a simple one, but as we heard through our discussions on Tuesday afternoon, it’s anything but simple. There are many, many questions from Regular Members which remain as yet unanswered, not because Ministers don’t want to provide the answers but because they can’t. They don’t have the information to pass on to us. Negotiations aren’t finalized so the status of the Bridge Corp is unknown. Deficiency tests aren’t completed so the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to deal with the motion I gave notice of earlier today.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for that. I already knew that number. She is referencing the number of people who are currently accessing the system. There are others who are not. I think it is incumbent upon the government to estimate those people who are not currently covered, who are not currently accessing the system so that we can then know what kind of costs we are incurring.

I would like to know from the Minister... We are going to have consultation. We are going to consider input, presumably. We are going to make a decision and draft a new program. I would like to ask the...

Mr. Speaker, I don’t think there was any reference to my question in there, but I will just kind of carry on.

To the Minister’s comment that I know where things are going, I know where the department wants us to think we are going. I know where the paper wants us to think we are going. I would like to say to the Minister we got some financial information the other day, some income threshold information, and I’d like to thank the Minister for that information that we got the other morning, but it presented almost more questions than it answered.

I would like to know from the Minister, because we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a couple of hardworking Pages today from the constituency of Frame Lake: brother and sister Stuart Hamre and Martha Hamre have been working very hard for us this week.

That’s kind of a damning statistic, if one has to wait a year to get into general surgery. I know that actually our wait times in the NWT are probably better than in some of the provinces in the South.

To the Minister, I understand that we have a policy that if we have a specialist in the NWT -- this is what my constituent ran into -- we have orthopaedic surgeons within the NWT and even though it’s a year or 18 months to wait for surgery or a particular injury in this case, if we have a specialist here, our patients cannot be referred to the South. So I’d like to ask the Minister whether or not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are addressed to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I hope the Minister has recovered from my apparent attack yesterday and is willing to give me some answers on wait times, which was actually my intent yesterday.

I know that we have significant wait times for specialist doctors, but I would like to know from the Minister whether or not we have identified standards for wait times both in Canada and in the NWT.

Mr. Speaker, I guess if we are and we have already input some $13 million into this project, we are going to get paid back through dividends, if I understood the Minister correctly, but I would think that if we are one-third partners and there is a dividend of, say, $30, we are only going to get one-third of that $30 dividend. We are only going to get $10. My understanding is that the other partners in the Deze Corporation have put in minimal money compared to our $13 million. In getting paid back through dividends, are we going to get an equal share of any dividend or are we going to get a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are addressed to the Minister responsible for the Power Corp. I spoke in my Member’s statement about the fact that we continually hear that the Taltson Expansion Project, Deze Energy Corporation, is a business, and that the enterprise and the expansion is itself a business, but the GNWT, as I mentioned, has put quite a few millions into this particular project. I’d like to ask the Premier whether or not the GNWT will be paid back for the millions that we have invested in this project. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister as well. I guess I would encourage the Minister to consider there may be cases where sending a patient south might actually speed things up and, if that is the case, I would encourage the Minister to consider doing that. I understand it’s probably unlikely, but we have to keep all doors open, in my mind.

The Minister mentioned something about wait times are about changing the system. If we have wait times as long as a year for one particular speciality, I’m sure there are others that happen to be longer. I would like to ask the Minister what we as...