That really didn’t give me the answer that I was looking for, but I guess I would have to hope that the Minister would provide me with the results of the overseeing as it goes on.
As I mentioned in my statement, I suggest that we need to revise the wages that students are paid. They’re currently paid about $26 an hour, which is wonderful if they actually have one of our precious and coveted GNWT jobs, but it’s not so great for those that don’t. So I would like to ask the Minister if he would consider setting a specific wage for summer students, something closer to $20 an hour or $18 an hour, so that the GNWT could provide this great financial opportunity to more of our summer students. And if not, why not? Thank you.
I’d be pleased to share the results of our summer student hiring with all of the Members in this Assembly. We have, in the past, looked at reducing summer student wages so that we could hire more summer students and we have looked at maybe using the minimum wage for summer students. Certainly, we know that we are not the only employer in the Northwest Territories; there are other employers that we feel should do their share of hiring summer students. We also have programs that will allow...where we contribute to the private sector hiring summer students and also boards and agencies. Certainly, we can commit to looking at reviewing the wages paid to summer students. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I’m glad to hear that the Minister is willing to look at the program. I’m also aghast that the department would consider using minimum wage as an appropriate wage for summer students; that’s not even the $10 an hour that we’re hoping we can get it ramped up to. So I hope that’s not going to happen.
This government has just eliminated a possible funding opportunity for students by cutting the Student Financial Assistance scholarship program. That was one opportunity that students had to add to their summer student dollar that they were accumulating for the next year. So other than what the Minister has mentioned, can he advise if there is anything specific that the department is considering to increase the number of summer student jobs? Thank you.
It’s still very early in the summer. Today is June 1st. Normally what we’d do is we’d send out a call to all departments, generally from the Premier and the Ministers to endeavour for the departments to hire summer students. Last year we hired 282 summer students, 84 Progressive Experience Program students and 26 relevant experience students. So we are looking at continuing to see more summer students being hired over the remainder of the summer. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to follow up from my Member’s statement with the Department of Transportation Minister. Specifically, on the Dettah road, we’re very happy to see that project going forward and some funds committed this year. Just towards completion of the entire project, what’s needed...I’m wondering if the department has a cost estimate for reconstruction of the entire Dettah road. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll have to interpret that to mean completion of this road as we saw and budgeted for or I’m sure the number of issues he’s raised in his Member’s statement are what he’s suggesting that we incorporate. At this point, we have targeted $2 million for this upcoming year and a further $2 million to do work on the Dettah road. The work will include engineering work, the surveys and all the designs and gravel production. As the Member knows, this road had very little in terms of real engineering structure and was constructed many years ago when most of the material was clay, and at that time there was very little in terms of consideration for drainage. So that’s the work that we’re focusing on. Down the road we may look at going the final step and look at putting a dust suppressant and possibly chipseal or something of that nature. Thank you.
That was a very neat, I suppose, side step, if the Minister is looking for praise from that standpoint. The question was plain: What is the cost estimate for the reconstruction of the entire Dettah road? I’m just trying to put things in context. I think I complimented the Minister on the funding for this year and I understand there might be funding for next year. So I guess I’ll have to ask the question again, Mr. Speaker: What is the cost estimate for the reconstruction of the entire Dettah road; to get the whole Dettah road up to standard? Thank you.
I want to thank the Member for the acknowledgement. Last year we didn’t have any money for this road and this year and next year we have a total of $4 million. As of now, that’s the money we have budgeted for investment and we will consider further work in other areas, as I mentioned earlier, for hard-topping the surface and possibly it may require further investment as we move forward. We have these dollars, this budget of $4 million currently that we’re focusing on. I have to state that this is the initial investment and I don’t have a final figure. Thank you.
I guess maybe we pulled another $2 million so we’re up to $4 million now. Good to know that that figure is public. I guess when I build a house or take on a project, I like to know what the full cost is for it. You know, I might build it in stages but...I’m just looking for what the full cost of the reconstruction of the Dettah road is. There’s, I believe, 11 kilometres there. I’m pretty sure that work’s been done, but if not, perhaps that could be done. Perhaps I could request that that be done. Will the Minister commit to getting that information?
I understand the Member is still building this House...
---Laughter
Mr. Speaker, right now, I can inform the Member we have earmarked $2 million for this year and $2 million for next year. That will bring us further along. As to a final figure, we’d be glad to share that and we will commit to providing all the information that we currently have gathered to the Member for his consideration and for his use. We’ll have that to him very shortly. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I guess I’d just like to get confirmation from the Minister that, in fact, there is no estimate; he doesn’t even know what the reconstruction of the Dettah road will cost, nor does he have a plan in place to ensure the completion of this project. I’d just like to get that confirmation. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Not at all. We do have a plan and our plan is to spend $4 million on the Dettah road. We certainly can provide that information to the Member as we move forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For my Member’s statement today I am speaking regarding the medical travel in the Beaufort-Delta and Nunakput. What are the policies and procedures for rearranging regular travel to medevac travel for sick patients who had their medical travel cancelled by the air carrier? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think we should be clear about the distinction between medevac travel and medical travel. In this case, I understand the patient was scheduled to fly on medical travel on a regularly scheduled flight and the private airline company cancelled the flight due to lack of passengers on that given day. The airline contacted the patient in question and rescheduled the travel to the next available time. It is unfortunate that that had to happen, but once in a while airlines do cancel their flights or sometimes they are delayed. We made a commitment to contact the airlines to let them know that this does affect medical travel and hopefully it won’t happen again. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Will the Minister commit to working with me with the various departments and agencies and the airlines to prevent future patients from having to wait for long periods of time in the communities and when they’re trying to return home after their medical, from seeing the doctor, because of flight cancellations due to the number of passengers? Thank you.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, I’d be happy to work with the Member in any way we can to improve our services to our residents in medical travel as well as medevac.
This area has serious flaws, Mr. Speaker, and the Minister and the department should bring this up at contract time for the air services in the Beaufort-Delta and Nunakput. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I’d be happy to undertake to do that. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation. Possibly with the exception of employees of the Power Corporation, as outlined by my colleague Mrs. Groenewegen, many residents of the Northwest Territories are still curious about the content of the unsolicited ATCO proposal. Specifically, what are the details? The people really want to know. When will the Premier be sharing the details of the proposal with the people of the Northwest Territories, who are ultimately the owners of the Power Corporation? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker Mr. Speaker, the process we’re involved with looking at the ATCO proposal is one I’ve laid out with Members as well as with key stakeholders involved in this. The process we’re using is one that as the GNWT is the sole shareholder. Yes, GNWT works for the people of the Northwest Territories. As we would with any business case and any public corporation, as well, work with their key stakeholders to do an evaluation. We’re in that process. The proposal itself is one that just starts the process, and we will be moving forward on that basis. Once the initial work, as I’ve laid out previously in the Assembly, on the rates regulation review as well as the Power Corp specific review itself, we would have more information to share with Members of this Assembly. That would be the process we would be involved with at this time. Thank you.
I’d like to thank the Premier for that. He kind of went into some aspects of the second question I want to ask, which is although there has been some information out there and there’s been a lot of press coverage on this topic, people are still confused about the review itself and the timelines that we’ll be moving forward with. Could the Premier tell me when will a more comprehensive outline and a timeline of the review of the unsolicited ATCO proposal be made public? Thank you, Mr. Speaker
Mr. Speaker, our process, again, is involved with working with Members as we would move forward on this and from time to time, involving key stakeholders in our decision-making. If we are going to move forward beyond looking at a proposal, then we would engage in a process to involve those that we feel need to be a part of that overall process. Right now things have been delayed. We don’t expect some of the discussions to really start in the sense of what it might be to expand looking at that proposal until probably fall time, late fall, late August, into September. Thank you.
I’d like to thank the Premier for that and I look forward to working with the Premier and Cabinet as they move forward on this particular topic. In relation to that, I’m curious who will make the final decision to merge with ATCO or not merge with ATCO to run the Power Corporation and when does the Premier anticipate a decision will be made? Will it be made by Cabinet, the decision itself, or will it be done by the Legislature as a whole? If it is done by the Legislature as a whole, how will that be determined or how will that direction be set? Will it be by way of a vote in this Legislature? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, we are way, way ahead of the process with the question. In a sense, as we would look at this, once the work is done, I will provide it to Cabinet and then sit down with Members as to what’s being presented and we’ll decide as Members of this Assembly. That is Regular Members and Cabinet, will sit down and have the discussion as to what the potential next steps may be. At that point, we’ll decide how we would move forward on that initiative. I go back to quite a number of Assemblies ago when the initiative, for example, of previous governments was to privatize a number of its operations. There was a motion put forward and consideration to stop that type of review or work being done. So it wasn’t, in a sense, a decision, but a motion. Working with Members in this forum we’d have to look at what next steps we have available to us. But first and foremost, we need to have the work done. We will sit down with Members and decide what makes sense and best business case for the people of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and once again, thanks to the Premier to that. I know it’s a long way off, but once a tentative decision is made, regardless of what that decision is, whether we merge or we don’t merge, will there be public meetings to discuss the GNWT’s position and obtain input and recommendations from all the owners of the Power Corporation, all the people of the Northwest Territories, prior to any irreversible decision being made? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First and foremost, I look to the authority of this House. The Members here represent the people of the Northwest Territories from quite a diverse range of communities and businesses and individuals. So our work would start here. We would decide how far we’d go and I’d also caution Members that we need to be careful in how we approach this. If we’re going to do every business case that we’re involved with by going out to the public, decisions won’t be made for quite some time. People of the Northwest Territories have made it quite clear they’re looking for some direction and some change in the way we do business, when it comes to generating power and distributing that power, in the hopes that we would stabilize or lower costs for people in the Territories, and that’s our goal at the end of this process. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member from Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
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 exactly where the problem is. The three Ministers were pointing at each other to perhaps maybe get me to ask the other Minister the question. I think ultimately that’s the problem, Mr. Speaker, but I’ll focus in on the housing Minister because I know he certainly is willing and interested on these types of questions.
So, Mr. Speaker, my question directly to the Minister of Housing on this eviction problem is: What intervention process does the department do in advance of issuing a court order or I should say in advance of seeking a court order for eviction? So what intervention process does that Department of Housing do to help avoid putting a family on the street? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there’s a number of ways we can work with the tenants in our public housing facilities, and we certainly work hard towards making sure everybody is aware of the programs and making sure that they have skills to analyze their fiscal situation. We have courses that they can take; they’re short-term courses, at their convenience, and many of our tenants have been taking us up on it. Many of our homeowner applicants are also utilizing this course so they can upgrade their life skills.
The eviction process is a very lengthy one. It can take upwards anywhere from a couple of months, if it was a fixed term lease, to up to a year and a half if there was a tenant that is on the eviction list and they are in our houses indeterminate. It usually requires three levels from the local housing association or authority to the individual, and in all instances the individual is requested and asked to come in and speak to the LHO. It also involves up to three occasions where the rental officer would contact the individual or the family to meet with them and also to go through the process. Failing all these attempts to rectify the situation, then the NWT rental officer will issue a court order to evict. So it’s a very lengthy process with many steps through the system that could allow the individual or the family to change the situations that they’re in. Thank you.
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 workers. So they have a process: pay or get out. So, Mr. Speaker, I’m asking for a little empathy built into this program so we can avoid people being kicked out. So would the Minister look at creating an intervention program where we can either work with our NGOs or have more of a social work component built into these housing officer positions that we can get people on the rails, on track paying their rent, rather than putting them on the street? Would he look at creating that process? Thank you.
We already have that process in place. Our tenant relations officers may not be social workers, but they certainly are trained and encouraged to work with our tenants to provide the financial information, to ensure that our tenants are aware of the risks that are involved by not paying their rent and, Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the Member that we don’t evict somebody for $32 a month non-payment. It’s usually a lot higher than that and we do allow for people to come in and start a repayment plan. That’s available to all our tenants. Many of our tenants that have somehow come in arrears and are struggling to make their payments, we have a recovery plan, we have a system where it will take some work to put it together and they pay their rent and then they pay a little bit towards their arrears. So I think it’s very generous and it’s available for all our tenants. Thank you.
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 get this phone call at two o’clock or later on a Friday and it’s the last day of the month and we can’t change it.
So, Mr. Speaker, the policy problem starts with the Minister and it goes down through the department. Would the Minister either using staff or create a philosophy or create a policy, for goodness sake, that says as soon as someone misses a payment, we’ll create an intervention program so whether it takes two months or 16 months, that we get people back on the tracks to pay their rent, rather than evict them? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My briefing notes say that the intervention program is already in place. Mr. Speaker, the Member is indicating or alluding to a point that he’s trying to make, that there is no program in place. We do have a very good program in place. It works for the most part. We cannot force people to pay their rent. If they’re going to skip their rent and not try to come forward and meet with us to set up a recovery plan, it’s very difficult for us to deal with that situation.
Also, for the record, the Housing Corporation charges full market rent. The subsidy comes through the ECE. So there are two departments they have to work with, but we do make allowances for people to work themselves out of a situation where it would lead to an eviction and we do have many, many steps that are involved that at any point the individual could sit down with us and sign an agreement or work a recovery plan in place. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
