Wendy Bisaro

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.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think this is the proper place to talk about this; somebody can direct me to where the correct place is if this one is not the right place. So in the Minister’s opening remarks there’s a couple of comments, one on page 2 about an Advisory Committee on Employability, the next page then talks about a sensitivity training project and then about tracking and reporting on employees, and all of these have to do with employees with disabilities or in and around employees with disabilities and accommodating them and encouraging employment of them and so on. I think it’s well...

I can assure the Minister that she will hear from the committee, I am positive of that.

To the questions that are a part of the document, I’m very glad to see that the questions are there. We could argue about the content of the questions for quite some time so I’m going to leave that, but I am a little concerned that the questions don’t leave it open for changes to the observations. So I would hope that anybody listening to the Minister takes her point that all of this is possible and any comments will be accepted.

I’d like to ask the Minister, the questions and this document that’s out there...

Thanks for that information. That’s good to hear. Hopefully something will come out of it. That’s great. That’s all.

Thanks to the Minister. I really didn’t get a sense, from her answer, what the format of the meeting is going to be. She’s talking about information being in front of people. I question how it’s going to get there. There is an awful lot of data that has been gathered, and I spoke earlier, I commend the department for doing that data, doing that research, but it sounds to me as though the department is putting the data out there and asking people to interpret it, and I’m not so sure that that’s an easy thing to do. Are they asking people to make their own conclusions? So I’d like to ask the...