Robert Hawkins

Mr. Chair, so the answer is no, but you take inquiries so that is fine. I see an opportunity to continue this dialogue. The example I provided was an example, one that is sort of in the public realm, one that is easily understood that makes sense to people. Whether they agree or disagree is not the issue as opposed to the example to illustrate is important. Fair enough. That is the only question I have at this particular time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today’s Member’s statement will be about bullying, and the speech I will be reading today has been penned from the eyes of a 12 year old, who is my son, McKinley, who is in the gallery here today. He has a way of not mixing words, and he has a particular way of being direct, so as such, I will read the speech he gave to his class a few days ago.

One in four teachers see nothing wrong with bullying. This is bad because teachers, the adults, are supposed to give students a proper education and prevent bullying, not sit around and not doing nothing about it.

My name is...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This section isn’t necessarily going to get a compliment. It may be a little more of a link. It is not necessarily criticism either, but what I’m finding here is there are some real concerns about the modernization of our present Liquor Act. Recently I brought some concerns to the Minister of Finance about some problems that we’ve been having in interpretation and certainly in the modernization. Does the Minister see any sort of public dialogue on potentially modernizing some of our liquor laws? As such, we have to sort of balance out what is real and modern and what is...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I share much of the concerns raised by Member Dolynny and thank him for the opportunity to bring the motion forward to talk about it.

I was part of the group in 2007 that was enthusiastically behind this initiative of the program review office and was genuinely optimistic that it would find savings, and it would be designed in a manner to look at savings in sort of a microscopic type of way, forensic, let’s go through these things, what does this mean, what does it affect, how does it have an impact on other things. Once that type of issue and question was qualified...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Without going through a long description as to what I want, I think the Minister knows. If he could provide me with a summary of what is funded, unfunded and empty positions and the value attributed to that. If he could send it to my office, I would be happy with that. Basically the same questions I asked Minister Ramsay in the Justice department. Thank you.

Thank you. Not every single year, but I’ve been an MLA close to 11 years now and I’ve tried to hire a summer student some summers, I’ve hired not only two but I’ve had three and let me tell you, it’s quite a treadmill, if I may say, trying to find work for three students, but I know they need the cash. So that now leads me into my next question, which is, is the Department of Human Resources willing to consider maybe a job sharing policy that splits some of the jobs? I mean, it’s not for me to say how we should split them, but by way of example, as the Minister just said earlier, they had 700...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to continue with the Minister of Human Resources on the Summer Student Employment Program. It’s funny; I got a tweet a minute ago saying: “Didn’t you hire somebody from down South”? I think it’s a good question and fair question to ask. I put three job offers out, but they were all waiting for GNWT jobs because they assume they pay much better, it would be more lucrative. That’s part of the issue here, is the fact that a lot of kids are waiting for jobs and they don’t want to take them. They’re hurting the public sector as well. They just want a shot at a...

Well, all I know, and I think a lot of Members know, is there’s a little button on some web pages that says apply here, click, send your resume in and good luck. That’s all that exists. There is no transparent process to know you’re competing for anything. There’s no transparent process to say or show or demonstrate your resume actually has gone anywhere besides the in-box of who knows who, who knows where, and who knows when. There is absolutely nothing for any student to know that their resume has been sent out and fairly, competitively been considered. That’s all I’m asking.

Now I’m asking...

I want to ask the Housing Minister questions too. Unfortunately, I don’t have any for him today. Seeing how, of course, the Housing Minister is giving out millions of dollars here…

My questions will be directed to the Minister of Human Resources. I’ve received a call, like most MLAs do every year this time of year, which are from both summer students and certainly parents alike, and often they see that other students are getting jobs and they’re hearing about placements already being made.

My question is to the Minister of Human Resources regarding the policy, as such, for early hires. Do we...

Mr. Chairman, after hearing that, it inspired me. I move that we report progress.

---Carried