Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I understand it, Bill 4, of course, is before the House and that’s the Health Information Act. What happens, as I’m learning a little more about this, actually it harkens to a question asked to me by a constituent who wanted to know more about electronic health records and how they’re managed from, say, a personal medical record position or perspective.

In the Northwest Territories, if I understand it correctly, we use a program called Wolf. So my question to the Minister of Health and Social Services is: How do we monitor access to this program to know that if you...

Mr. Speaker, it is once again budget day in the NWT, or I’ve started to see it as it’s Cabinet day once again, a day once a year where all of Cabinet’s dreams are realized and Members’ requests are simply daunted off for yet another year.

When the Finance Minister continues to school us about discipline choices and that we must be thinking about a fiscally sustainable path, that’s become consensus talking for saying we have no money for Members’ initiatives, but don’t worry, your day will one day come.

When the government talks about fiscal restraint, I go to my dictionary and it reads they’re...

There is no student rep on this Board of Governors. I’ve gone to other websites of other universities and other colleges, and they all have an accessible porthole on how to get a hold of the Board of Governors. It may not be a direct e-mail but it’s one that goes to them. Why in this day and age, don’t we have this?

I will ask this question: How does the Minister define accountability and accessibility to their students, because I have yet to hear it today.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions, of course, will be directed to the Minister of Education.

Noting the fact that letters and e-mails are vetted through the Aurora College president’s office, which should be a concern just in itself, with also noting that the student rep on the Board of Governors is still waiting Cabinet approval, from my understanding, and furthermore that the student rep’s appointment only lasts a single year and by the time that the Cabinet gets to this perennial appointment it’s half over anyway, this makes it challenging for them to participate in the Board of Governors...

I appreciate the quick response from the Premier and his willingness to address this. I would certainly hope that I’d get a response back and that he’d have this tabled within we’ll say 10 days. That seems reasonable, because I’ve had people inquire about this at my office.

My last question would be is that under the report respecting benefits paid to Ministers under the Ministerial Benefits Policy, reviewing old tablings, which goes up to March 31, 2011, not all information is there. For some reason there’s information highlighted out, and what I may point out are things like hospitality where...

Mr. Speaker, defining accessibility by bumping into your Board of Governors representative at the Northern in Inuvik is not accountability. Going to the Co-op in Yellowknife and bumping into your Board of Governors rep is not accountability, and certainly going to the hardware store in Fort Smith is not defined as accountability.

Will the Minister, under Section 7 of the Aurora College Act, use his authority and direct the college to meet with these students at least once a term so people can hear directly their issues and they can understand them, because right now I’ve heard zero today about...

Clearly, the question was missed, so I will reword it.

I did not hear one element that demonstrates how these Board of Governors are representing the students in an accessible and certainly in a transparent, accountable way.

In the same vein, will the Minister use his authority under Section 7 of the Aurora College Act, and instruct the college to get these Board of Governors’ e-mail addresses so the students can contact them, and furthermore, would he instruct the Board of Governors to meet with these students as a board to hear their concerns?

Mr. Speaker, a few short weeks ago, a number of MLAs went to the Yellowknife Aurora College campus, and we were there to hear from the students. As we expected, we heard a number of various concerns, and if I might rightly put them in different categories, I would call some of them city issues, ECE issues, and certainly Aurora College-specific issues.

While listening to these concerns it came to me: Has the college ever undertaken an opportunity to listen and certainly meet these students? So I posed the question, has anyone met their Board of Governors to talk about their concerns? Not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to table a letter I wrote on January 27, 2014, to the chair of the Board of Governors, Ms. Sydney O’Sullivan. It is regarding some of the concerns about accessibility and accountability that I see with the governors in relating to their students. Of course, part of the letter is to encourage them to hold a public meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions will be directed to the Premier, Bob McLeod. I have a question regarding some of the tabled documents that have not been tabled. What I’ll do is rather than asking two separate questions, I will put them together, because basically it’s the same issue, they haven’t been tabled.

The first question I’d like to point out is the fact that the ministerial travel reports have only been updated as of January to March 2013, and they were tabled in the House. Of course, they haven’t been tabled for three consecutive sessions after that and there’s supposed to be a...