Robert Hawkins

Déclarations dans les débats

Debates of , (day 11)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’m not sure where the Minister is getting his briefing notes, but I did check the land and, by the way, I got the information from your department. So you can make all the funny jokes you want; this is from your office. So, Mr. Speaker, in February 2007, the city expressed interest in reviewing options for purchasing the Con and the Rycon trailer courts. In July 2007, the city passed a motion to acquire the common areas of the trailer court and recommended MACA should offer fee-simple title to the existing leaseholders to them directly. So where is...

Debates of , (day 11)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I was reading my Member’s statement and I was starting to wonder, is the MACA department standing in the way of accessible lots and, therefore, affordable housing here in the city of Yellowknife. Mr. Speaker, I have to try to figure out why the Minister of MACA has refused to allow the application to come forward by the City of Yellowknife to go to the public process, the interim measures agreement. So, Mr. Speaker, maybe the Minister can help explain to this House and to the City of Yellowknife where the transparent process has gone and why he refused...

Debates of , (day 11)

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When the Minister talks about it being a good investment, I wouldn’t argue that in any way. Has the department done any investment on their own to find out how long we keep some of these people that we provide student loans to? The reason I ask that is because I think it’s fabulous to work at bringing everyone’s education up and that works for society as a whole. I am just curious; once somebody takes out a student loan, they get their schooling paid for and they come back and get their years remissed, if it’s three or four years, do they say see you later? Do we ever...

Debates of , (day 11)

Mr. Speaker, I wasn’t going to bother with the last question, but because of the Minister’s fine answer about we are ahead of schedule, well, maybe the Minister should revisit his briefing notes on this because it was supposed to open a year ago because it was planned to open and finish in October of last year. So maybe instead of his notes saying 2007, it actually says 2006. So the fact is the building is almost a year late from when it was originally supposed to open. People who are in this need said, well, it’s okay; we can wait. Well, March rolled around four or five months later and...

Debates of , (day 11)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I haven’t asked him this week, but it was just over a week ago they still didn’t even have the building in their possession to be screening applications. So is the Minister really sure that the building is in their possession so they can be screening applications in order to allow people to move into this barrier-free building that was designed for seniors and people with disabilities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , (day 11)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, I think the Minister just accurately coined out the problem because the fact is, he’s come up with a new process for land that’s already been requested and already been approved because, Mr. Speaker, it wasn’t that long ago that the City of Yellowknife applied for that area of land and it was okay because it went through the IMA, no applications came in from a third party interest to stop it. So the fact is, it was already heading over to the side of the City of Yellowknife with no problem, but yet the MACA Minister slows it down. It’s still going to the same...

Debates of , (day 10)

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Maybe it is not appropriate to ask the question because you say it is not involved, but to further pursue this, why isn’t it involved in the Public Health Act? One could see it as a toxic substance. Yes, it may help cavities, but it is also found in other areas to be quite toxic to people for their general health. Why wouldn’t it have been considered for this act? Thank you.

Debates of , (day 10)

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just for clarification on this, more so on the intent, do we do any…What type of follow-up do we do with water testing and do we broadcast our testing results anywhere? So it sort of speaks to the section as a whole. I suspect community water testing gets sent into some facility like the Stanton Territorial Hospital, gets screened out and…Like, what do we do for public assurance, because the average person wouldn’t know where their water quality sits. They just assume, unless there’s a flag or a report on one of the media things, everything’s good. So where does...

Debates of , (day 10)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, their responsibility is not the answer. Their problem is not the answer. Mr. Speaker, I want to hear the Minister say that it was his fault in the sense of…Boil it down to the fact that he knew about this months ago. Now we have chopped up a system and who knows what we have. Will the new system be tested to ensure that it works properly before we put it back on line and we put our employees’ personal information at risk once again? I can tell you for a fact, e-mails were floating around even earlier this week with personal information of various...

Debates of , (day 10)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask questions today to the Minister of Human Resources. I want to make sure that we totally understand and find out, did we receive the program, the pay and benefits program, PeopleSoft, that we actually thought we were buying, Mr. Speaker? I am concerned that we may have bought a product that was faulty from the very beginning. Mr. Speaker, my first question to the Minister today is to find out what did we do when we bought this program. So, Mr. Speaker, does the Human Resources Minister today know, or can he tell us the fact that, did...