Robert Hawkins

Mr. Speaker, may I say I certainly appreciate the answer from the Minister. Mr. Speaker, when can we expect some type of adoption of regulations or plans to recognize this particular problem? I certainly see it as an issue that we don’t need to wait for a contaminated site to cause problems and set off alarms. Mr. Speaker, I would certainly like to hear from the Minister his opinion and, certainly, objective of the department as to when they hopefully will have this plan in place to update the regulations. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I may applaud the Minister for a fantastic answer on dealing with this issue. Mr. Speaker, just one last question. I certainly hope, as I view this as a territorial problem not just a Yellowknife problem -- and I stress that -- would the Minister look into the feasibility, and I stress, look into only the feasibility at this time about drawing it into a long-term program where we can ensure that all our schools are barrier-free and certainly accessible not just to our students but to our community? Because, as we all know, schools are schools during the day, but they are also the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This afternoon I’d like to talk about barrier-free schools and playgrounds. It is my understanding, Mr. Speaker, that this government stands for inclusive education and has for a long time. The issue being raised today is that some parents recently requested money from the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to improve accessibility at one of the Yellowknife schools, because at least one of their students is confined to a wheelchair and they wanted to make sure that the playground was as accessible as possible to them. However, Mr. Speaker, their funding was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, rules of the House stopped me from saying what I really want to say, but the fact is, it’s not true. I can tell you right now, because I have a constituent who was trying to pay their arrears at the Yellowknife Housing Authority and they were catching up and it was certainly within reach and yet they were told that if they didn’t pay it all up by that Friday they were out. And guess what. They got a reprieve for a couple of weeks and then the Supreme Court folks showed up and it was only because there was a mix-up in processing the paper that gave them a couple...

Well, Mr. Speaker, let me paint a picture. You’re an at-risk family, you’re paying $32 a month, you miss one of the month’s rents and all of a sudden your rent now jumps from $32 to market rent and you start getting letters in the mail and you’re afraid of these letters and all of a sudden the letters keep coming and all of a sudden you’re now getting a knock on the door and you’re being told that you have 30 days to move out.

Mr. Speaker, our tenant officers do not have training in any sort of a social work aspect. So, Mr. Speaker, noting that, these staff are data entry folks, not social...

I’d like to recognize Jenny Bruce in the gallery, as well as Jerry Lapierre. As we all know, Jerry is a well-known volunteer for auctioneering. He does the Celebrity Auction, the Rotary Bike Auction, and the Ducks Unlimited Auction, as well as many others. Just one last point; a lot of people say that he contributes quite generously on this thing and he doesn’t get enough credit for his community contribution for auctioneering in our city.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also seek unanimous consent to waive Rule 93(4) and have Committee Report 8-16(3) moved into Committee of the Whole for consideration today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Unanimous consent granted.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to return to item 12.

---Unanimous consent granted.

Mr. Speaker, for the record, it was when you miss your $32 payment it then springs into market rent so then you have to pay the full rent, just for clarification. But, Mr. Speaker, the Minister’s briefing note doesn’t talk about real life. The Minister’s briefing note talks about sort of pie in the sky about, well, don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of it and we’ll get them on track. Well, I’ll tell you, it was just a couple of weeks ago I had a family that was catching up to their arrears and yet they got this Supreme Court notice to get out. Lo and behold, MLAs like myself and other MLAs...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today in my Member’s statement I talked about some of the complexities of eviction notices where public housing tenants are evicted and I proposed sort of some of the problems in a sense of also presenting a solution whereas if we had someone working with them in an intervention program, we may be able to avoid some of these evictions that end up on the shoulders of some of our NGO organizations.

But, Mr. Speaker, incidentally, as I pointed out, the Department of Health, Department of Housing and certainly the Department of Education...Oddly enough I saw...