Mr. Speaker, the process we’ve been involved with takes a lot of time with departments, Cabinet and Members. Once we’re through this budget process, we’ll be sitting down and putting energy to a lot of the initiatives we’ve talked about. This area will be one of those. In fact, I think we can send out a directive. The staff are getting and listening to this message that, as we prepare for the next level of reports, we have to see how we can barrel back some of those initiatives. We also have to recognize that not all communities are fully up to speed with the e-mail system and the technology, so we’ve got to work on improving that piece as well. But where it fits, we will be going down that path.
I’d like to tell the Minister that I certainly understand that not all of our communities have the opportunities and access to technology that some of the larger centres do, but I feel very strongly that we have the technology and we should be using it. I’m glad that the Minister suggests that staff can act on their own by hearing this particular discussion.
This isn’t a question. Well, maybe it is a question. I’d like to ask the Minister how, for the second day in a row, a Cabinet Minister was able to anticipate my next question. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, all I can say is that we have been sensitized by working with committee members and trying to do the best job we can. Hopefully, we can continue down that path and be as prepared as we are and responsive. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to request a response to my question from the Minister, who must know what I’m going to ask. Thank you very much.
Laughter.
Mr. Speaker, I don’t actually know whether this is the Minister of ENR or ITI, but as I mentioned during my statement, there is zero requirement for development projects, large industry, to provide even 1 per cent of their energy requirements from renewable energy or to offset, and no compulsory requirement to gradually wrap that up to increasing amounts to address the climate change issue. Is the appropriate Minister working on getting that legislation in place?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’ll put the question to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is one of the issues on the list that we have to come to grips with. The federal government has come out with their own suggested plan. Now they’re indicating they’re prepared to look at alternative suggestions. It’s a discussion, as a government, that we have to have. Some of our existing policies, like the Greenhouse Gas Strategy, are mainly focused on how government does business, how we’re going to control our own emissions. But as we look at development, existing and to come, it is an issue that we’re going to, as a government, have to put our minds around in a policy sense.
Thank you to the Minister for that response. Our people are demanding that this government respond to the situation and not slough this off to the federal government. We’re also not talking policy; we’re talking about compulsory measures, which requires legislation. The MGP will triple our emissions. The diamond mines almost doubled them. How is the Minister planning to mitigate these impacts, which are on the backs of our people, as they walk away with their large profits?
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to point out that we are moving to occupy a field where some would question the issue of jurisdiction. I’m speaking specifically about the area of water. We’re moving forward — in a very proactive way, I think. We have a framework that we’re going to be taking to committee here. The Premier’s mentioned that. We have a broad land-use framework that we’re working on, and we intend to work with committee. We have a joint climate change committee that’s going to give us advice on how to move forward on this.
This is an issue that has work required to be done. We don’t have clear answers, but clearly, we recognize that there is an increase. There’s the JRP report that we’re waiting to come out with, in terms of the Mackenzie gas pipeline, and as we move forward with further developments, this issue is going to be becoming clearer and clearer. We have to sort out, as a government and as a Legislature, what’s the most appropriate step. I know the Member has very clear ideas. As the Member would respect and acknowledge, there is a wide range of opinions as well. We have to try to bring those together into one solid policy.
The residents and communities are actually doing quite a bit on this sort of thing, but we’re looking for some response to industry. The non-government organizations have shouldered the costs in the joint review process of the Mackenzie Gas Project. They are the ones who hired the economists to look at what the carbon-neutral approach would cost. And it’s quite modest, in the order of less than a 10 per cent increase in costs — 5 to 7 per cent. When is this government going to start playing that role and, instead of being open for business and subsidizing this industry, get some answers on what it would cost to make it responsible for development that benefits the local people?
Mr. Speaker, even Imperial Oil, from what I’ve been reading, is getting enormous pressure from its major shareholders to be more environmentally responsible. We recognize and we have to make sure that business does not get by on the backs of Northerners, that they acknowledge the impact of what they’re doing in terms of development. While it may not be a perfect system, we are moving more and more down that path to not only a recognition, but as I indicated to the Member, we’re going to be developing the policies with the help and guidance of the MLAs and the climate change committee, for example, of how best to do this.
Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister acknowledged Imperial, which, of course, is part of the largest profit-making machine in the world. Northerners are paying the cost once again. Our foundations are disintegrating. We’re losing our species. The polar bears are having problems in some areas, and there are much more dire predictions and so on. Will this Minister commit to looking at and aggressively pursuing some compulsory requirements for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by large industry?
I would be happy to commit to the Member that I will come forward, along with our Cabinet colleagues, with a paper that outlines those policy implications and the jurisdictional issues and lays out the landscape as we plan to move forward collectively here at the Legislature, and how can we best do that to address the issue that Mr. Bromley has raised.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are in follow-up to my Member's statement on the end of operations of Volunteer NWT.
Given that the voluntary sector is a key player in helping us develop and maintain healthy communities, I was sad to hear that Volunteer NWT, which is a champion for the sector, is shutting down operations due to limited and/or no funding from the GNWT. In the past the GNWT has supported them and has provided some funding. Now it appears that they've cut them completely off.
My question is to the Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs. I'm curious, specifically, given the strategic plan of this Legislative Assembly, how is it that MACA has decided that the sector no longer warrants some financial support, given that they are our partners in helping us develop some financing framework in the sector?
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think, first of all, we should be clear on who has cut funding to Volunteer NWT. We never did provide any core funding to Volunteer NWT. We had an arrangement with the federal government and Volunteer NWT to be partners on a number of initiatives. The core funding came through the federal government’s funding sources. A couple of years ago that funding lapsed and was not going to be renewed. Our investment in Volunteer NWT was on specific small initiatives.
Where that is actually true, in the past, is the feds had provided money. The feds, in their wisdom, had actually cut the money last year, and the GNWT stood up and helped support the voluntary sector through the Volunteer NWT. Regardless of whether the feds are doing it or not, they play an incredibly important role in the Northwest Territories, which has clearly been acknowledged through our strategic plan.
I'd like to ask the Minister to commit to meeting with Volunteer NWT and working out some form of financial arrangement that will help them sustain their existence and continue to do the good work that they do on behalf of the people in the Northwest Territories.
We have been meeting with Volunteer NWT as recently as last week, or several weeks ago at least. The dollars that were provided to Volunteer NWT was $50,000. That money was to be used to explore new and other sources of revenue for that organization, as we indicated to them that we were not in a position to core fund them or pick up where the federal government cut the funding. So those dollars were provided to them. I don't believe we have seen a report of what they have found. Our information tells us that Volunteer has decided to wind up their organization as they haven't been able to identify any new sources.
From the government's standpoint we still think that there is a lot of merit in having an organization or a good support system in place, and we want to continue moving towards that. The Premier has mentioned that there should be a review or more investment or discussion in this area. We'd like to do that. First of all, we have to get our house in order. We are also expecting to have further discussions with the Building Our Future Committee to see where we can play a role in supporting Volunteer NWT and the volunteer sector.
However, having said that, we still have our own initiatives that we'll continue to fund. We have dollars in our budget, providing it gets approved, to do our own initiatives that support volunteers.
I'm quite happy to hear that the department is willing to work with the sector. I think that's great. It's great that they understand the value and hope to work with, but on the other side, they turn around and say, “But we're not giving you any money.”
The sector actually has gone out and has found some money. I indicated it in my Member's statement. They also have a great relationship with Sport North, which helps them with some infrastructure and whatnot. So they still do require some operating funds from time to time. As an example, the board consists of members from all over the Northwest Territories who are coming together to put together a common message and a common theme on the voluntary sector, which includes those pure-volunteer organizations as well as NGOs, and trying to work with the government to find a solid finance framework that will ensure health of the sector as a whole. So as champions, they are incredibly important, and I think we're missing the point.
I would once again like to encourage the Minister to dig in and to see if there's any opportunity to find some additional funds. They're not asking for a lot of money at this point in time but some money to help with their basic operation.
As indicated, we still have a considerable amount of time to deal with a number of issues that are not, maybe, at the top of our list, as some Members would like to see.
The volunteer sector and Volunteer NWT, I think, are two separate issues at this point. We are still investing in the volunteer sector. We don't have any money to provide core funding to Volunteer NWT. We would like to take a step back and start looking at this issue and look at all the issues of interest to the volunteer sector and make sure that each department across the government is involved and that we provide appropriate leadership. We would like to be able to work with the Building Our Future Committee and look at ways we can identify resources and start funding some of these priorities in the volunteer area.
Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Once again that all sounds great. Unfortunately, it also sounds like you're going to be doing to the voluntary sector what you're occasionally doing to us, which is telling them what you're going to do, rather than working with them.
Volunteer NWT is a central organization, a champion for all these groups, and would be a great group to engage and involve in conversation to help set a direction that's going to be acceptable to all the groups that are out there.
If you're not going to give them money, will you at least meet with Volunteer NWT and find some way to engage the actual individuals who are the champions for the sector as a whole? I think it's not the right answer, but at least we could find some way to engage them. If there's no money, we have no choice, but will you engage the individuals involved?
That's something that we have been doing on a fairly regular basis in the last while, trying to find ways to support Volunteer NWT. We have been meeting with their executive.
Our information is that they have since dissolved their organization. To bring in the board and representatives from across the Northwest Territories is going to be a very extensive undertaking. At this point we don't have the resources to do that. We'd like to bring people from across the North to talk about volunteerism and to see how we can improve our system and support. However, until we identify the resources and come up with a plan, we are not going to be able to do that.
We will commit to seeing if there's any desire from…. I'm not sure there's an organization to meet with anymore, but we can commit to contacting at least the former members.
Mr. Speaker, we did not kill the organization. We never had any support dollars for core funding. That was the responsibility of the federal government.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on my Member's statement. Again, I want to question the Minister of Justice today, in this House, regarding the delivery and provision of sex offender programming and family violence programming at North Slave Correctional Centre.
The more I think about this and the more digging around that I'm able to do, it raises a number of concerns for me. I've asked the Minister this question before, about how the qualifications and the delivery of programming at North Slave Correctional Centre could potentially impact the federal inmates that are housed at that centre. Now, the answer I got back from the Minister was that it wouldn’t impact it. But that’s not what I’m hearing today, Mr. Speaker.
I want to ask the Minister of Justice: will the change in personnel and the changes that he’s looking at implementing there impact our ability to house federal inmates at North Slave Correctional Facility?
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for Justice, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The North Slave Correctional Facility offers, through Corrections Canada services, an ex-offender relapse program, a family violence program, the national substance abuse program and also the anger emotion program, which the program delivery officers provided for a number of years. We certainly will continue with the program. There’s no such impact to the program itself. We will continue to deliver a program, so there is no impact. Mahsi.
But again, I am having trouble understanding the rationale the Minister uses. I want to ask him: what standards and policies does Corrections in the Department of Justice have when it comes to programming? Do those policies and standards mirror the federal government’s Correctional Service of Canada?
Mr. Speaker, we do follow the Corrections Canada services guidelines and criteria when it comes to program delivery. The three individuals we are talking about — the program delivery officer and two case managers and also the psychologists that deliver this program — were mentored and trained to deliver the offender program and accredited by the Correctional Service of Canada. So it is certified through the Correctional Service of Canada to deliver the program. It is a highly recognized program and a highly recognized accreditation that these individuals receive. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, I am having trouble understanding how…. I don’t see anywhere in what I’ve read — the information that I’ve read from the Correctional Service of Canada — where they say it’s okay to train somebody for a week or ten days and send them into a classroom in group therapy so they can train or program sex offenders so they can be rehabilitated and go back into the community. I am not sure where it says that anywhere.
I want to ask the Minister: does he understand that having a “train the trainer” that he talked about the other day and backfilling positions…? We are talking about rehabilitating sex offenders. I am not sure how the Minister can say that it is okay to train somebody for a week or ten days and send inmates back into our communities. It doesn’t make any sense to me, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I think it’s important that we recognize the program delivery criteria. It came down from the federal government, federal Corrections. What more can we offer? It is accredited for these individuals to deliver a program — the four key areas for rehabilitation — into the community. So we have trained these individuals for, as the Member states, a couple of weeks, a few weeks. We train these individuals, and they are trained. They are certified by the Correctional Service of Canada because it is their program, as well, so we are meeting the standards of their criteria at North Slave Correctional Facility. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I am going to be interested in seeing what happens here and how long the program at North Slave Correctional Facility continues to be, as the Minister said, certified by the federal government. I think that’s going to change with some of the job cuts out there and the re-profiling of positions. I think that’s going to change.
I want to ask the Minister: can he tell us today what qualifications program-delivery officers or whoever is going to be conducting the programming…? What qualifications do they have — clinical, academic and professional expertise — to deliver those programs, Mr. Speaker?
Mr. Speaker, I can’t speak specifically to the position. It is a confidential matter. If we do highlight their credentials and qualifications, we are specifically targeting those individuals, and I certainly cannot speak to that. But I can speak to the criteria that we follow: again, it’s the Correctional Service of Canada. My staff will be meeting with Corrections next week.
Just to move forward on this, we want to train more individuals at Corrections as well. We want the program to be successful. It has been very successful to date. We want to continue the progress. So we are moving in the right direction. We do have trained people, certified and accredited by the Correctional Service of Canada.
The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Mr. Speaker, my questions are for either the Premier or the Minister of Human Resources. We as a government, as everybody knows, have been looking at ways to save money. The Regular Members got together and came up with a list of potential reductions. We submitted that to Cabinet. As yet, we have not had a formal response back to that, because we were told that those would require some analysis.
I would like to know what kind of flexibility we have. Everybody knows that during the 13th Assembly we came up with something called Donny Days, where non-essential service providers were given the days off between Christmas and New Year’s. Is there any potential for that type of thing again, perhaps between National Aboriginal Day and July 1? That seems to be a bit of a week there when a lot of people are…. Well, there are two stat holidays very close together. Has any consideration been given to that?
The Hon. Premier, Mr. Roland.
Flexibility is something we definitely need to look at in this area. For the record, though, we did respond to the committee on the specific changes we made within the budget documents before this Assembly, based on some of the recommendations the Members made. A number of the recommendations require that they go into the Refocusing Government initiative. So as we get through this phase, we’ll be putting the energy in, working with Members to see how we can implement those in the next budget cycle, as we’re starting to enter that process as well.
The area the Member has raised, the Donny Days scenario — in fact, in one of my meetings with the UNW president, I suggested that…what can we look at in the future? Because we obviously haven’t met our targets to date. We need to still look at how we use the money wisely in the North. Is there an appetite for looking at something of that nature coming down? He said that though the union is always opposed to looking at reductions to hours for staffing, in principle that’s something that could be looked at. So I think it’s an avenue that we should approach.
I recall the days of discussion on Donny Days. Some of the staff within the communities that I represent — and the correspondence I received — said they’d be happy to take a Friday afternoon off the odd time. So though we haven’t entered those discussions, we need to have those as part of the mix as we go forward.
When I look at private sector employers and even the federal government, they have a lot of opportunities for their employees to partake in different things, like transitional retirement, where instead of going from working five days a week to full retirement, they look at reducing their work week to four days a week and then down to three days a week and then they’re off on their retirement. There is an opportunity for people to work six-hour days instead of eight-hour days. There are all kinds of different opportunities available to people who have different lifestyles or different times of their life where they may need the extra time or they may like to work less. People are concerned about quality of life. We as a government have an opportunity, I believe, to offer people workplace flexibility that would save us money and make them happier. I want to know what work is underway to consider those options.
Mr. Speaker, I should say for the record that “mandatory days off” are in fact the official words that we use in our policy, going forward. The issue of what other areas we’re looking at — we do have to work with the unions that operate in the Northwest Territories, because the working conditions, the hours set, also work directly with those negotiations. So we’d be prepared to engage in a level of discussion to see if there are avenues of flexibility within that working arrangement. Once we get to the next stage and begin the next process of business planning for the remainder of the life of this government, we’re going to have to look at a number of options and see if they would be effective solutions for us.
Mr. Speaker, I’m not hearing that we actually do have a lot of flexibility to do some of those things, so that is a discussion I would like this government to embark on with the union. I really do believe there could be cost savings, and it could be a win-win situation for everyone.
I have a situation in my constituency, for example, where a person wants to retire, but they want to know that they can come back as a casual. Why can’t that kind of thing be facilitated?
I’d have to get some clarity from the Minister of Human Resources, but my understanding of the process is that we’re looking at retirement. If individuals have set their dates, we have to work with, for example, Superannuation, because there are set dates when individuals can qualify. Working with them on potential earlier retirement for individuals that may be affected…. Once people are retired, I don’t see where we have any problems. Again, I’d have to defer to the Minister of Human Resources and get more detail on that. But for retirement and coming back as a casual, people call their regional offices or offices in communities and put their name on the list. I’ll have to see if there’s any problem around that, going forward. I’ll get that information to the Member.
I look forward to hearing what the Premier finds out about that. It’s not just that they…. They have everything in place to retire: the pension, everything, all the numbers; they’ve reached the goals. But before they do that, they would like to know for sure that they could come back as a casual, because it’s important to their decision whether they retire or not. If that kind of thing could be accommodated, I think it could be a win-win for everyone.
