Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to pick up a little bit on one of the subjects Member Dolynny raised with the Deh Cho Bridge. Of course, I’ll be directing them, obviously, to the Minister of Transportation.
More than a year ago, I was raising with the former Minister of Transportation a concern about the electrical contractor, how he was quite proud about the fact that the southern contractor met the expectations of the contract, and of course, we had to award it to the southern contractor because they were cheaper. Of course, they met the standards of everything that they had asked for in the contract. But my understanding is they never met those expectations on safety and installation process. Of course, their community commitment, from my understanding, was nothing and I think that proved itself out by itself.
I would like to get some details on how a southern contractor fulfilled their obligations when they won the electrical contract on the Deh Cho Bridge. My questions are to the Minister of Transportation to explain how that rolled out and how they met every obligation that they won that contract under. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a commitment to the House, the department did a retrospective analysis of the bridge and also accepted all of the recommendations of the Auditor General. The specific work that was done in detail, the contract that the Member speaks of, I don’t have that detail here with me and I am not able to speak on that at this time. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the former Minister proclaimed quite adamantly and passionately about how much money they were saving, but it seems like we may be just redoing all that work that that southern contractor lowballed the bid so that they can get the job. Now I want to know, is this electrical work that they did last year under the conditions that we thought we were being led down the garden path that they would be obliged to meet and would meet and promised to meet haven’t been met.
Can the Minister explain, has the electrical work fully been signed off as lawful and safe for Northerners and are a fulfilled their contract in the eyes of the Department of Transportation?
Mr. Speaker, as I indicated, I don’t have the details of the contract that the Member speaks of. It would be difficult for me to determine or indicate whether or not all the work has been signed off as good work by the department. My understanding is that these individuals that were doing the work are professionals. I know that the staff that are inspecting the work are professionals. My assumption is that if the staff is signing off on work on the Deh Cho Bridge, then the work is done to proper standard. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to know what the Department of Transportation is going to do when it comes to finding out if we have any holdbacks on this particular work at this time and what are we going to do when we need to address these in the future. Quite frankly, a northern company that has investments here, that has employees hired here that wanted to do this particular work lost the job because the southern business lowballed them and it seems like we are going back to fix the work that they lowballed a northern company.
Are we at a financial risk or a legal risk in this situation because we accepted a low tender but we allowed a change order to sneak well beyond the original expectations?
Mr. Speaker, I don’t have the details of that specific contract. I don’t have the details of the change order to that contract, but there are regulations in place, there are holdbacks on all contracts to accommodate any potential issues on the contracts, so those are our standard. They are laid out in the contract. Depending on what the price of the overall contract was, then the holdback would be there. The appropriate amount would be held back to ensure that the work is completed to a standard that’s acceptable. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think we need to boil it down to who is responsible for this mismanagement of this electrical contract. Frankly, it seems as if they were all too excited to save all this money, but it turns out that it has turned into an interesting boondoggle all over because oh, my goodness, we are going to save money from a southern company, but it turns out if we have to redo the work, it’s going to cost us more. I, quite frankly, think we are in a situation of liability here that we may rightfully, if not morally, owe money or some type of responsible action towards the original northern company that bid on the work, could have done the work or we wouldn’t be talking about it today. I would like to hear what type of accountability this Minister is going to hold somebody to account. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the department doesn’t mismanage projects. I don’t believe that this is one that was mismanaged. I will check into the allegations made here by the Member. I’m sure that everything is done according to the regulations, according to the standards. There are certainly a lot of regulations surrounding any sort of electrical work. We will ensure that is done within that. I don’t believe there is mismanagement.
I can advise the Members if there are any issues out there, but I don’t believe there are. It’s difficult for me to respond to a question when the Member is assuming that things are mismanaged. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to take this opportunity to try and get some clarification from the Minister of Health and Social Services with regards to some answers he gave to MLA Blake two days ago in regards to the Medical Travel Policy and escorts. In his answer to Mr. Blake, the Minister stated that there was going to be an RFP put out to deal with an escort policy. I believe that’s what I heard. Hansard doesn’t really clarify it for me. From Hansard, the Minister stated, “I’m hoping to have that Cabinet policy to Cabinet and then to Standing Committee on Social Programs in July.” That’s a little confusing to me, plus the reference to the RFP. So I would like to ask the Minister if he could please elaborate a bit and clarify it for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I apologize for the confusion. Several months ago, I briefed committee and provided them with some information on the review of the Medical Travel Policy. We had hoped to actually have what would be the base policy, the Cabinet policy ready for some discussion in March. Unfortunately, I had an opportunity to be briefed on that and I didn’t feel it was consistent with the types of questions and concerns the Members had been raising, so I asked the department to do a little bit of work. As a result, we are delayed on that. I hope to have that base Cabinet policy around medical travel done in July so that I can share it with Cabinet and Regular Members.
As part of the medical travel review, we were going to work on the base Cabinet policy but then we were also to do some work on some specific aspects of it, things such as escorts, non-medical escorts as well as fees as well as an appeal process. That was going to occur based on the timeline that I provided after we had done the base policy.
Frankly, given the delay that is now in place, I don’t want to wait to do the work on the escort portion because clearly we are hearing from people that that needs to be done. I have directed the department to prepare and go out with an RFP to seek somebody who can actually help us through that process to facilitate meeting with stakeholders, bring individuals who have some input that they want to provide onto this, build upon all the statistical work that we pulled together and all the research that we’ve done to do that public consultation process to make recommendations on how to move forward with this escort portion.
We’ve heard a lot of opinion; we’ve heard a lot of ideas; we’ve heard a lot of solutions. Some of the solutions contradict each other. I’ve had one community say we want to do this and other communities say please don’t do that. There is a lot of information there. We are seeking a consultant to help us go through that process and give us some concrete recommendations on the escort portion. That is what the RFP is for.
I apologize for any confusion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thanks to the Minister for the explanation. Generally, policy is developed internally. Why is it that we need to go to an RFP and hire a contractor to develop this part of the policy? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we have a certain number of staff in the department who are doing a large amount of work, and more and more priorities are coming at them on a regular basis. We have seen clearly that we are capped with resources, and I want this work to be done and I want it to be done as quickly as possible, but we often go out and seek additional resources to help with the reviews and analysis and there are people who can help us do this in a timely manner, so this isn’t unusual, but given the timelines, we want to make sure that we get this done. I feel it’s important to expedite the section around escorts. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I totally agree. This policy has been revised for a very long period of time, so I’m glad that we are moving forward on the whole policy but specifically on this one section.
I’m still a bit confused when the Minister references a Cabinet policy. I’m not sure if that is a policy that stays just within Cabinet. When policies are developed, they are generally made public. So when he talks about a Cabinet policy, is this a policy that will be public afterwards and he is simply calling it a Cabinet policy because it’s not approved? I’m a little confused there. Thanks.
What I’m referring to is the overarching policy with respect to medical travel and how it operates and functions. It will be available to the authorities, it will be available to all individuals. We will make sure that people understand the Medical Travel Policy. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m probably the umpteenth person who has stood up in this House to talk about Junior Kindergarten, but I have to weigh in on this topic. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Right from the start, who can argue with early childhood development and expanding that within our government? Where the problem lies is how this department tried to take, yet again, a cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all approach to early childhood development in the communities without taking into consideration what impacts that would have and what ripple effect that would have. In a community like Hay River where we have play school, Growing Together, Tree House, Aboriginal Head Start where age four children attend all of these programs, sure, parents are going to put their kids into an optional Junior Kindergarten Program, but we have added this. We’ve asked our educational councils to do more with less. So I don’t think you could find a parent who wouldn’t agree with the principle, but if you ask the same parents if they want to have the whole school system diluted by adding another grade, essentially, into our schools without any funding to go with it, I’m sure you would get some mixed responses.
So I would like to ask the Minister – and maybe he’s been asked this before, but let me ask again – did you consider, in the small communities where the need was the most dire where you didn’t already have long established ECE programming, did you approach the federal government and think about things like Aboriginal Head Start? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This particular programming, Junior Kindergarten is part of it. Head Start program is another one. We have eight Head Start programs across the territory through federal funding. Obviously, yes, we have approached the federal government on numerous programs such as Head Start and other early childhood delivery into the communities. We’ve been told over and over, it’s your own jurisdictional deliverance. We have to work with that, but every opportunity, yes, we have met with the federal government not only on the education part but other labour market development agreements and other sources of funding that could be potentially available to us, so we have embarked on that and we will continue to do so.
Did the department consider that rolling out Junior Kindergarten in all communities without any consideration for what was already there in the area of early childhood development, did the department consider how that was going to affect those existing programs that had been on the ground for a very long time? When you take all of the four-year-olds out of all the ones I just named, what is the result for those and the daycares? Are we basically gutting all that stuff that we’ve already established in favour of Junior Kindergarten? Thank you.
Yes. The answer would be yes. We have considered all those mitigations and working with the early childhood deliverers in the communities, the child care workers, as well, and the program deliverers. We thought about all the implications, as well, but at the same time, creating more opportunities where if we draw out the four-year-olds, they have more opportunity to focus on zero to three years of age. How can we assist in those areas?
At the same time, the Head Start program, some of those have been in place for a number of years. This is an option for enhancing. Working with the Head Start program, it’s an optional program for them, for the parents. So we’ve reached out to the workers, reached out to program developers and provide them as much support as we possibly can and provide options as well. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Did the department consider that in the small communities where there was nothing established formally for early childhood development, that perhaps a made-in-the-North, not in association with the school, kind of approach could have been better where we could have involved parents and families and incorporated some other kind of parenting support and training and life skills and different things? I am not trying to be mean to the smaller communities, but obviously there is a higher unemployment rate in those communities and it might have been an opportunity to get parents and children, if not a program, fashioned particularly for those communities in consultation with those communities rather than trying to add a grade into schools. Was that considered? Thank you.
I agree that that is part of the process with early childhood development, the overall framework. When we talk about early childhood development, it is a mega piece of work across the Northwest Territories. Junior Kindergarten is just one piece of it. We have all these different initiatives on the go. Recommendations are brought to our attention as part of the action plan. Now we’re currently working on those on what we can do immediately, the short-term/long-term plans.
So, yes, we’ve considered all those areas. It came from the parents, grandparents and educators. Based on that, we are rolling out those specific programs. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have such a diversity of communities and such a diversity of needs in the Northwest Territories. I just think that something that was not across the board and more responsive to each community in terms of what was already there and what was needed would have been a better approach. Would the Minister agree? Thank you.
I agree we have to have all those programs in our communities that do not have licenced early childhood programming. Based on the stats we have delivered in the House, there are 10 communities without the program. So, yes, I agree with that. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Environment. Several weeks ago an academic panel of experts put out a 295 page report on the hydraulic fracking in Canada. I want to ask the Minister if his department has taken a look at the report and compared it to what we already have in the Northwest Territories, what we have with the National Energy Board and what we have within our own land claims/water board provisions on this issue. Are we doing most of what the experts believe we need to be looking at or are we above and beyond what the report is stating? Has an analysis been done like that?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are aware of the report. We have done extensive work, a couple of years at least, of our own work looking at best practices and looking at other jurisdictions. There has been a lot of on-the-ground research done. Mr. Ramsay has taken a number of groups to different sites to take a look first-hand. We now have regulatory authority, we have a development assessment process. We are looking at that report along with all the other work that’s out there in terms of the best practices. As we look at the issue of hydraulic fracking, how do we do it in the best way possible that will honour our obligation and commitment to people and look after the land, water and animals at the same time and have balanced sustainable development? So, that report will add some information and value to those processes. Thank you.
In the report that I briefly read, the summary, are there studies that we are already undertaking? We have the Sahtu Land Use Plan put together by primarily the elders in the Sahtu where they’re saying there’s development and there’s no development. I mean, our elders put this Sahtu Land Use Plan together over 15 years.
I want to ask the Minister of Environment, because the environment is very close to us. The elders know what they’re talking about. I want to ask, in regard to this report, is there any type of evidence that we’re doing right now that says we’re doing more than what the report is stating?
We, as a government, are aware of the need to do, within the Sahtu, some regional groundwater mapping. The baseline work on wildlife, that work is underway. There is work being done through the Environmental Studies Research Fund, which is a fund and a program that involves the federal government and the territorial government as well as assistance from industry. We’ve got money invested there, nearly a million dollars as well. The industry representatives have been very forthcoming in terms of offering to share the site-specific work that they have to do in regard to groundwater and wildlife impacts that we could add to that knowledge base. We are clearly now embarked upon that project over the long term to conclude that much needed baseline information.
The technique that I understood from Husky and Conoco’s personnel, and of course our own research in our communities, is that the hydraulic fracking would go down about two kilometres underground. Some of the other fears that people have is that there are only shallow wells that will be hydraulically fracked. That’s not the case in the case in the Sahtu.
Is there any type of method that can reassure the people that when we do hydraulic fracking underground two kilometres, that if there are any type of tracers that you can put in the fluid that shows that the actual chemicals are coming up out of that type of operation? Is there any type of information that you have that could reassure our people that from other locations that they’re doing hydraulic fracking that this is probably something that we could use in determining our decision as to the methods being used in the Sahtu?
As the individual projects are permitted, there are going to be the requirements to look at those types of issues. What we are committing to, of course, is a thorough monitoring on an ongoing basis. We’ll be able to track to very, very close range the need to go below groundwater tables and then there will be ongoing monitoring on site. We’ve also developed a process across the Northwest Territories with community-based groundwater monitoring that we’ll be looking and testing water on a regular basis, so we are going to have all the steps and best practices in place that we need to provide those assurances.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Sahtu has provisions within the land claims and the Sahtu Land Use Plan and, of course, our own co-management decision-making authority with our Sahtu Land and Water Board, so we’re in the driver’s seat on this issue here.
I want to ask the Minister, in the analysis of the report that came out by the academic experts, I’m not too sure if they looked at our authorities in the Sahtu to have this issue being looked at. I want to ask the Minister, other than the Sahtu region getting the attention on this hydraulic fracking, are there other fracking operations in the Northwest Territories?
We’ve been in the oil business for literally decades. There has been a tremendous amount of traditional vertical drilling and fracking. The issue of horizontal is something that is, from my understanding, new to the Northwest Territories and is being looked at carefully through the process we’ve just been talking about here in this House. I’m not aware that there was any other horizontal fracking that I’m aware of.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Hawkins.
Mr. Speaker, I’m going to have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment regarding some of this Junior Kindergarten stuff, just to follow up with some of the problems that we’ve talked about to date and certainly issues I’ve raised before.
I was speaking to two parents yesterday with grave concerns about this, because they had gone to an invitation at, I believe, our museum to talk about the impacts on day home operators, and the senior official said that, yes, you might lose a third of your income, but if you were better budgeters you would notice very little change.
Is that the advice our senior officials are giving the families that take care of our most precious people, which is our children? Is that sanctioned and condoned and directed by the Department of Education?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When we talked about rolling out the Junior Kindergarten, we wanted to work closely with the daycare providers and also the child care workers. We provided as much support as we possibly could to hear their perspective, and we took all that into consideration as well.
That’s not an answer. When the senior official says day homes need to accept that things are going to change and you’re going to lose money and you need to accept that, when two parents are telling me this yesterday, directed from our government, which in essence is the Minister’s words if you put it this way, because they’re head of the department, is this sanctioned, condoned and stood by, by this Minister?
