Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One hundred and ninety-six health care cards were actually delivered to the wrong address and what happened is exactly what the Member identified, is addresses were messed up on a spreadsheet. One hundred and ten of those 196 cards were returned to us having never been opened, which means that there were about 86 that were not received back.
We, as a government, as a department, are monitoring the use of those cards and trying to make sure that they are not being used inappropriately by the wrong person. Everybody that was affected, all 196 were notified so they knew that had happened. So we will continue to monitor those 86 outstanding cards and the problem has been fixed, it was a human error and we’ve changed the process so it won’t occur again. Thank you.
I appreciate the Minister’s reply, but to the question of privacy, why is it that we’re not considering this a breach of privacy, and again I’ll ask the Minister, why does he not address that question of privacy breach? Thank you.
The wrong addresses on the card would not give the individuals who received the card the ability to access any of the actual individual’s health care information. Thank you.
Thank you. I tend to disagree with the Minister here. The reason why is one only has to do simple Internet searches to see that stolen health care cards are linked to serious fraud-related and false health care claims from every part of Canada, costing taxpayers millions.
So again, to the Minister, what steps were taken to ensure, now we’re hearing 195 or 196 cards, not 195 cards, were collected, were redistributed to the proper owner or destroyed? Again, we heard that there are still 86 outstanding. Where are those cards? Thank you.
One hundred and ninety-six cards were mailed in error, 110 of them came back, 86 of them are outstanding. We have made efforts to get those cards back. We have notified all of the affected individuals and we will continue to monitor those cards to make sure that there is no unusual activity on those cards. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess we’re getting nowhere fast here. We know that the Information and Privacy Commissioner is conducting some sort of audit on these misdirected health care cards.
While we’re waiting for the results of the investigation, what assurances can the Minister provide this House that this mistake won’t happen again? Thank you.
Thank you. As I indicated, this was a human error. We have reviewed the processes that were being utilized in that particular office, and we have put in safeguards to make sure that there’s now a process of double-checking the cards and double-checking the data to make sure that anything that is printed on the cards is accurate. So we have actually made the changes to the steps and the protocols on those cards. It should not happen again. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on my Member’s statement about the forest fire season, I have questions for the Minister of ENR.
Now that all the smoke has cleared, does the department know exactly what the costs of this season’s firefighting was to the government?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That final calculation is still being compiled and we’ll have that in the coming weeks. Thank you.
Does the Minister know how these extraordinary costs can be covered through the GNWT finances?
Thank you. The extra funds are covered through borrowing the money. Thank you.
Thank you. I’m just wondering if the Minister believes or has evaluated whether we have actually a large enough base in our fire suppression budget so that we don’t have to always come back to this House. I know typically this is an exceptional year, but have we evaluated the base budget for fire suppression?
Yes, we are aware of the committee’s concern and of course, from a business perspective, we know that that number is too small. We have looked at sort of a 10-year rolling average and it would be about $10 million. So we’re going to look, based on our work and committee’s recommendations, we’re going to be looking at how we can have a base budget that’s more reflective of the reality. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My last question is on maybe an evaluation of the existing or the operations this year.
Have we seen anywhere we can do some cost savings, economies of scale when we have larger fire seasons, and going forward, how do we evaluate that?
Thank you. We are at work in terms of a review, cleaning up after fire season, doing the final accounting and then doing the critical debrief is underway. Then early in the new year, we’ll have that work done and we expect to be able to go forward with those findings to committee to have a thorough discussion in anticipation of the upcoming fire season. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I spent a bit of time highlighting some of the words the Finance Minister had provided this House on February 6th. It was really talking about embarking on a new adventure of trying to create this initiative that would draw 2,000 new people to the Northwest Territories over the next five years, but as our NWT Bureau of Stats has clearly said, outlined – and I put great faith in their hard work – we’ve had a drop of 218 people in this last year, which puts us about 10 percent below that greater mark.
So, what I want to hear from the Minister today is what is he doing as an initiative to draw new people to the Northwest Territories, because we’ve lost 218 thus far. This has a serious impact in Yellowknife, but it has a crippling impact on every small community. When they lose those jobs, it is devastating, that financial economy is taxed, it hurts the community and we have to put every single effort into building resources in those areas. So, what is the Minister doing? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re not, in effect, losing jobs. What we’re trying to do is find people to fill the jobs that we have that are in many cases going begging. We have met as a government now numerous times.
We have a working committee that’s looking at a whole host of things, very simple things like the issue that has bedeviled many of us in many of the departments from following up with our students has been this issue that ECE had with confidentiality and an inability to share the information on students in school, where they are, what they’re studying, so that we can in fact make sure that we stay in touch with them and make the job offers and recruit them the same way that the private sector is doing. That issue has been resolved and it’s going to open significant opportunities for us.
We are doing very common sense things like working with industry to jointly go south to job fairs and we combine our efforts to recruit into the North, collectively.
We are looking at, once again through Education, a nominee program, integration program. There’s a new express program coming out from the federal government. We’re looking at that as a way that we can get folks on the ground here, where you can now reach out for specific occupations and get guaranteed from the federal government that within six months you’ll be able to get these folks landed on the ground and in the communities where the jobs are.
We’ve had now two meetings with industry to talk about the further work that they’re doing, the challenges that we collectively have with housing, and there’s more work underway as well. Thank you.
I was proudly educated in the Northwest Territories, growing up in Fort Simpson and in Yellowknife. My education taught me that negative 218 persons is a lot. So when the Minister says to me – and remember, this is the gentleman in charge of our books and our finances – we’re not losing ground, perhaps the Minister of Finance can explain how a loss of 218 people isn’t a loss to the Northwest Territories and the Northwest Territories isn’t losing ground. Thank you.
Thank you. The Member is a fine example of the success of our education system. We’re not excluding the fact that it’s a loss. What we have done is started a program, an initiative that we’ve given ourselves a five-year time horizon, because we recognize that these things take time to sort things out, to turn things around, to do the work that’s necessary, to make the changes that are necessary, to do the things with HR, for example, where we want to be able to go south and enable the folks that go south to take interviews and do job offers on the spot so that we can be way more timely in how we fill our positions. We don’t argue at all that it’s a loss and it’s setting us even further behind, but our goal still remains the same. We want to look at increasing the population by 2,000, in five years, or greater if at all possible.
Yellowknife’s population has relatively remained the same and we’ve been fortunate only on the principle that we’ve had growth from the communities. That’s terrible, because where the real impact is happening is in the communities. Getting the jobs out to the communities will have a positive effect on the whole territory, every single program we need.
In my Member’s statement today, I said let’s put two teachers in every single school. That would bring new families to every community; that would bring new job growth, new vitality and new cash on the ground where people spend money. There’s an initiative.
Would the Minister speak to that idea, because that would deliver immediate change to those communities and a seriously enormous, positive effect on everything that happens there.
There are a couple of initiatives that are intertwined here. We are looking at increasing the population of the Northwest Territories. That is one thing we’re trying to do. We are working, as a government, on decentralization to move positions outside of the centre, out to the communities. That work is underway. Phase three is now underway. We are also working to fill the very many vacancies we have, and we have approximately a split between Yellowknife and communities of vacancies anywhere between five to 800 positions that we’re trying to fill in both inside Yellowknife and outside of Yellowknife. If we can address those issues, I think we would be in fine shape.
The issue of adding potentially two teachers in every community, so 66 new positions to the government at a time of fiscal restraint when we also have all these other vacancies, would be a little premature.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I said in my Member’s statement that the net effect would actually be awash because our growth and our federal grant transfer would actually cover the cost of those teachers. May I also briefly remind the Minister that he had pointed out in his February 6th statement that in 2013 we continued to lose population? What’s happening here is, year over year over year we continue to lose population.
My last question is simply this: Where have there been any results of population growth in the Northwest Territories under the tenure of this McLeod government?
What we have laid out is a good, solid plan on a go-forward basis that we believe is going to show results. We are making a lot of the structural, organizational and procedural changes to do that. We have initiated a much closer working relationship with the private sector to make this a combined and joint effort so it’s not just strictly government.
But I can tell you, from a simple math point of view, if we filled the vacancies that we have, then we would address the issue that the Member is talking about many times over, and if we would recruit all the students that we’re giving SFA to, to come back home to take jobs that are there, if we do a better job at that, that would be part of the solution of making those staff changes.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Premier. I would like to ask the Premier a few questions following up on the acceptance of all the devolution legislation that we passed, I guess that we had to accept in the spring. I’d like to, first of all, ask the Premier, in the previous session, and certainly when we were discussing devolution, there was commitment from the Premier that there would be consultation on the devolution legislation that we inherited from the federal government and the three bills that we put forward on our own.
I’d like to ask the Minister, firstly, what has been done since there was something posted quietly on the GNWT website asking for feedback from residents. There’s been little to no publicity around that; that I’m aware of. I’d like to ask the Premier, apart from that, I’d like to get an update on what the government is doing in regards to public consultation on devolution legislation.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member knows, we have committed to doing a review of the 27 pieces of legislation that were mirrored by this government. We have posted on our website and there have been approximately 500 hits on the website. A number of people have been accessing various pieces of legislation, but as of this date there have been no substantive questions or expressions of any concern of any of the legislation on the website.
Thanks to the Premier for that information. Five hundred hits could simply indicate that somebody’s wondering what’s behind that. I’m a little dismayed that there hasn’t been much response, but then responding to complex legislation on a website is not something that’s easily done.
At one point, several times, I think, in our discussions there was a commitment from the government and from the Premier that Regular Members would be involved in consultations with residents around this devolution legislation. I’d like to ask the Premier, what are the future plans for consultation with residents on devolution legislation?
What was outlined and discussed with committee was that we would put this legislation on the website and at the appropriate time we would gather all of the feedback and issues and concerns that were raised and that we would report back to committee with the intention that where there were areas of concern, we would deal with the specific legislation.
Just to be more specific, there have been 1,709 legislation review website views, 537 of those were on the pages that list the new legislation. Specific sites that were visited were the Oil and Gas Operations Act and the Petroleum Resources Act. They were the most popular, and visitors spent an average of 2.25 minutes reviewing the material. There were also 184 visits to the question and answer and comment page, and I said there were zero questions submitted for response, zero comments submitted for posting, zero requests for additional briefings, zero new written submissions where we’re asking the public to identify what areas of legislation they were concerned with and what changes they would like to see implemented and improved.
Thanks to the Premier for that informative information, but I have to say, it’s pretty hard to comment on complex legislation in two and a half minutes. Goodness knows, the Premier mentioned 27 pieces of legislation, and I am aware that we’re dealing with 10.
To the Premier, I’d like to know, it sounds as though the only plans that were there was that we were going to take comments from the public. It was then going to come back to Regular Members.
I need to specifically ask the Premier, as he, I thought, committed to Regular Members to do this consultation in concert with us, are there plans to go out to the public in person and to publicize it far more than we have already and to do consultation with our residents?
As I have said before, the objective of the review was to encourage the general public to better understand the legislative process associated with devolution, including mirroring and delegation. Also, to have an opportunity to review the devolution legislation and to ask questions of clarification. We also wanted to communicate that the devolve and then evolve process, and we wanted to gather initial public responses, questions and suggestions about current and future devolution legislation and we wanted to provide the general public with an understanding of the legislative processes for amendment of existing bills and development of new legislation. I think we’ve accomplished all of those, and what we want to do, I guess, is we will take all of the information that we’ve received.
Perhaps in view of the lack of response, we could extend the process and start another communications process to appoint people to the legislation. But I guess in my mind, with the fact that there is little or no response, it means that everybody, the public, is happy with the mirrored legislation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t agree with the Premier that no response means that everybody’s happy. I think there’s been a huge lack of publicity about this. I think there also has been an ignoring of the fact that Regular Members and Cabinet wanted to work together on this and that hasn’t happened.
So again I would like to ask the Premier – he’s saying that maybe something will happen – if he will commit to working with the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning to develop a consultation plan so that residents will have a reasonable and concrete input into devolution legislation problems and changes. Thank you.
The website update and advertising campaign began on May 20, 2014. It was highlighted in the sessional statement of May 28th. This was followed by a news release on May 29th and a very extensive advertising campaign in northern papers. We are planning to start another round of advertising and it’s scheduled to start in early November. As usual and as always, we work very closely with committee on all of these things.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Premier in follow-up to my Member’s statement today. The Premier is aware of all the ways the residents of the NWT have expressed their grave concerns about fracking, the impacts of fracking and the need for thorough and inclusive review as so many jurisdictions are doing.
This government has devolved authorities to give Northerners more voice, according to the Premier, yet they are clearly being stifled by our own government who refuses to hear them.
Given the failure to penetrate this government’s comprehension to date, what will the Premier do to show that we are not as colonial as the evidence would suggest, that Northerners do indeed have a voice and that their call for review will be heard? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sustainable economic development is a priority for the Government of the Northwest Territories. With devolution, as the Member points out, our Government of the Northwest Territories is taking on a greater role in creating our future and guiding the Northwest Territories economy. We strive for balanced development where we have development while protecting the environment.
In the North the regulatory system flows from land claim agreements with land and water boards, with representatives of the federal, territorial and Aboriginal governments tasked with making decisions on behalf of Northwest Territories residents.
As we’ve said many times, we will be coming out with draft regulations that will deal with oil and gas that will be available for public input and it will be circulated widely. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That certainly confirms that Northerners’ voices are not being heard. According to an EKOS poll last week, 70 percent of Canadians, regardless of political affiliation, support a fracking moratorium “until it is scientifically proven to be safe.” Significant numbers of Northerners want the same thing, or at least a comprehensive review. GNWT departments have authority because the MVRMA calls for an environmental review if there “might be public concern.”
What expression from the public is required for the Premier to finally listen to the people and ensure a thorough, transparent and public environmental review of fracking which includes the fundamental question “should we accept the risks of fracking,” not just how are we going to frack? Mahsi.
