Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question that applies to all of these increases. The briefing note explains that there was no increase for fuel in this current year’s budget for all of these departments. My question to the Minister, I guess, is that it sounds as though we have adjusted our amounts going forward, future years, sounds as though we are planning to budget enough dollars to cover what we expect to incur in fuel costs. I guess my question would be: is that correct? Are we now stabilized going forward with this additional funding for fuel? Have we added enough money in our 2010-11...

Then to the Minister: if these are observations, then I am a little bit concerned. These three things are prefaced by a statement which says there are a number of things we need to change about uninsured health benefits. That doesn’t sound much like an observation to me. If the Minister feels that these are observations and if these are, indeed, observations, I’d like to ask the Minister, is there an opportunity during the consultation process, which is going to go on or is going on and has just started, is there an opportunity to amend these observations, as she calls them, modify them, add...

The Minister just leads me into sort of my next thought, my next question. I mean, why do we budget on last year’s numbers if we know that we’re going to have demographics that are going to likely cause us to have an increase? So it’s kind of a rhetorical question, I’ve said this before; I have great difficulty in the fact that we establish our original budgets based on numbers which we expect to change and then come back three or four times during the year and say, oh, gee whiz, we need more money. So more of a comment than anything, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are addressed to the Minister for Health and Social Services, and I have some further questions about the supplementary health benefit consultations programs. I discovered just within the last hour that it’s a bit of a moving target, this consultation paper that they have out there. I printed the document shortly before I came down to the House and went back up to check it again and discovered that the document had changed in the half an hour since I’d been down here. So I hope that it’s now finalized.

On page 14 or 15, depending upon...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. A question here. I guess I’m just a little bit surprised that we didn’t anticipate these increased costs. We’re almost $1.4 million in increased costs for benefit payments basically on behalf of our employees. Could I get an explanation from the Minister as to why we couldn’t foresee these increased costs? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to use my Member’s statement today to comment on a recent experience: the opportunity I had to travel to Vancouver to represent the NWT last Friday, NWT Day at the Olympics, and to take in the marvellous Olympic atmosphere in that city over the weekend.

A couple of weeks ago I stated that the money expended by our government for participation in the Olympics has been money well spent. Now, more than ever, I believe that to be correct. Friday morning, attending MLAs were given a tour of our Northern House and, as Members have heard before, it’s an impressive venue...

That seems like an awful lot of money, $2 million to implement the plan. Are we adding staff or is this contracted services that we’re using to put this plan in place? Can I have a bit of an explanation as to where this money is being spent? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is all I have.

Thanks to the Minister. I just wanted to comment on Mr. Ramsay’s comment. I do agree with him that things seem to be improved and the number of complaints coming forward to us as Members with regards to the HR department have been less, so I do think that the department is doing good work, I just wanted to echo Mr. Ramsay’s comment. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, I am done.

I guess I’m still not quite understanding the value of providing sensitivity training to somebody who already has a disability and is employed. So are these people taking the training? Are they there as a resource to the people who are giving the training? Again, I don’t quite understand the value of providing sensitivity training to somebody who is already identified as a person with a disability. Thank you.