Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am happy to report that the Government of the Northwest Territories hired 308 students this past summer. This was an increase of 9 percent from 2011, when 286 students were hired. Of the 308 students hired, 54.6 percent were indigenous Aboriginals.
The summer student employment is an investment in our future and our youth. Through this program, northern students gain valuable work experience to complement their formal education and test drive the GNWT as a future employer.
At the end of the summer, we asked the students about their experiences. The feedback we received was very positive. One student responded by saying the best thing about working for the GNWT was the autonomy: having a supervisor who believed the staff could handle their responsibilities. We want these students to come back next summer and apply what they’ve learned. They’ll get increasingly complex duties and develop as individuals. We want them to have fulfilling careers after they graduate and consider a career with the public service.
This year we made changes to the summer student orientation to ensure that students understand their job duties and our expectations of them. We held three full-day orientation sessions in Yellowknife, and one each in Fort Smith, Fort Simpson and Inuvik. Students had the opportunity to hear about work and life in the GNWT from all levels of management. I had the chance, at one session, to explain our expectations and promote the public service as an employer. While fielding questions, I
was very impressed by the intelligence and enthusiasm of this bright group of students.
Students also heard from GNWT employees who had recently taken advantage of the summer student and internship programs to start their careers in the public service. Peer feedback on how experience complements formal education helps ensure that our youth are equipped for a positive and successful career after graduation.
Our investment in summer students is paying off. Our public service workforce is growing older, and so we rely on student programs and internships to transfer knowledge from one generation to another. To quote another student, “there are many benefits to returning to the GNWT after graduation; it is one of the best places to start as a newly graduated person for the experience and responsibilities that you are given.” The GNWT has just been recognized as one of Canada’s top 100 employers for 2013, and our efforts to recruit and retain students and interns contributed greatly to that recognition. I was proud to see the Globe and Mail coverage included an interview with a former student who is now a senior manager in our government.
Mr. Speaker, it was a very successful summer for the employment of students. I would like to thank department and agency managers for the incredible work they do with the students and to all others who support this program. Summer students are a good investment in the public service of the future. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I received a response Wednesday to my written questions to the Minister of Transportation’s climate change adaptation statement of May 31st. It contains some startling cost figures and is clearly a prophesy for the future.
I asked for information on a number of topics, including cost impacts on the road systems. A five-year-old conservative estimate sets the impact on roads to $1.2 million every year. Five-year-old figures aren’t too useful when Arctic sea ice melt estimates are withering faster than the ice.
Elsewhere the response tops up the bill: $300,000, for ferry ice spray equipment, $1.5 million for Highway No. 3 test strips and $100,000 for a vulnerability assessment, $700,000 to extend openings at three ferry crossings, $852,000 to repair shifting highways. The report goes on: $230,000 for Climate Change Adaptation Plan development, $140,000 for ice penetrating radar, $90,000 for ice road adaptation projects, $860,000 for improved de-icing facilities at the Yellowknife Airport.
Mr. Speaker, I asked for information on the Inuvik Airport when their plane slid off the runway, but that wasn’t supplied.
In all, over $6 million in increased costs just for the specifics I asked for. Remember, this is only the Department of Transportation budget. It doesn’t even touch the costs to all other departments for damage to infrastructure, increased costs of maintenance, or impacts on cost of living for all of our citizens for shrinking roads, impacts on different structure, et cetera, damage to their property.
As the Minister’s May 31st statement said, the facts are daunting and pose a new level of uncertainty. So what’s the response? Well, the proud news release of last week confirmed we hope to limit NWT greenhouse gas emissions of 2020 to a 66 percent growth over 2005 levels. As our current highways degrade and soak up increased maintenance dollars, we plan to drive new roads across some of the worst construction conditions in the world.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Mahsi.
---Unanimous consent granted
We may be able to build the Inuvik-Tuk highway and Mackenzie Valley Highway but can we maintain them? Just ask my colleague Mr. Menicoche about Highway No. 7.
So what would be an appropriate response, Mr. Speaker? We clearly need to recognize our situation and provide the leadership so needed on this pervasive issue. Let’s put in place the policies that lead aggressively to a low-carbon economy in ways that build new industries, provide new jobs, strengthen our local economies and generate the environmental benefits we all want so much.
Such action would attract the people we want to come north and join our society as we lead the way. I will be asking questions later during question period, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The renewal of the Wildlife Act is a high priority for this government. Updates to existing legislation are long overdue and additional provisions to modernize the act are equally needed. The renewal of the Wildlife Act has been a long journey, a trail that hasn’t ended yet.
First Nations governments have lingering concerns about how this legislation, when passed, will affect their traditional lands and how they will be able to manage the resources that have sustained their lives for centuries. In spite of assurances that the rights guaranteed to the Aboriginal people in the Canadian Constitution will prevail over the act, members of our First Nations communities remain concerned about how their rights will be upheld.
One of the greatest areas of conflict when the Wildlife Act was introduced in the last Assembly was membership in the Conference on Wildlife Management. If we want a stable and effective wildlife management system, this source of disagreement must be resolved before legislation is passed. Our approach to serious issues affecting wildlife will only be as strong as the consensus reached among stakeholders on basic wildlife management structure. That emotion will also impact wildlife management.
I caution Cabinet that many people in the Northwest Territories still feel that the Devolution Agreement-in-Principle and the new Wildlife Act are undermining their treaty and Aboriginal rights. What we can do right now is agree to work together.
The Government of the Northwest Territories has deferred the introduction of the new act for a few more months in order to continue to address some of the divisive issues in the legislation that was introduced in the 16th Assembly. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources conducted further consultation this summer and has made an effort to meaningfully engage all stakeholders. The general public and, in particular, First Nations must be fully engaged in the development of this important act.
Members on this side of this House look forward to working with Cabinet to pass a sound piece of legislation that works in the best interest of wildlife and the rights and interests of all people in the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I spoke yesterday in my statement of a number of issues raised during the Yellowknife municipal election, but time did not permit me to list them all.
Another election concern mentioned many times during the campaign was the cost of living, and a huge contributor to Yellowknife’s cost of living is housing. This city lacks both affordable housing and enough housing for the homeless, including the homeless who couch surf.
Mr. Bromley spoke yesterday of lengthy waiting lists at all of the local housing authorities, Yellowknife included. If you’re a single person in Yellowknife looking to get into public housing, you won’t. There are not enough units and the policies place singles as an absolute bottom priority for public housing.
There’s one particular wait list that I’m especially concerned about and that is the waiting list at Rockhill, the only transitional housing facility in Yellowknife. I was shocked to hear last week that their waiting list is at 150 families and increasing daily. That is in addition to the applications for public housing at the Yellowknife Housing Authority.
Yellowknife is a magnet community and many NWT residents move to Yellowknife from their own community to access the programs and services that are offered here. Yellowknife needs more public housing and more transitional housing.
Because this is a large community compared to others in the NWT, because there are many single family homes and a thriving rental market here, it is assumed, wrongly, that anyone living in Yellowknife can find housing for themselves and their families. This works for most, but low-income families are seriously struggling.
As I said, there are over 150 applicants on the waiting list at the YWCA transitional housing. Why such a long list? Because people can’t afford the rent charged for market housing. The current vacancy rate of less than 1 percent favours landlords, and public housing units are just not available.
Yellowknife needs more public housing and more transitional housing. The NWT Housing Corporation has about 2,400 public housing units throughout the NWT, and that’s in 23 of our communities. How many of those public housing units are in Yellowknife? Yellowknife has only 289 units. That means 12 percent of the total public housing units in the NWT are in Yellowknife. Twelve percent to serve 50 percent of the NWT’s population. That’s not enough and the Housing Corporation must act to fill Yellowknife’s urgent need.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sorry about that. Last week in Yellowknife I had the pleasure of attending the Northern Governance and Economic Prosperity Conference that brought together indigenous northern government, business leaders, policymakers, social activists and economics under the theme Pathways to Prosperity.
The premise of the conference was to reflect on northern political institutions that could change to better adapt to various governance authorities while balancing the social and economic challenges. This was a tall task, but I must praise the work of the conference co-chairs, Mr. Willard Hagen, Dr. Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox and our former Premier Mr. Stephen Kakfwi for an outstanding job.
Both our Premier and Minister Ramsay had keynote addresses to the conference delegates. One key line that resonated well by Premier McLeod was: “We want a territory where strong northern governments work together in the best interests of all people of the Northwest Territories, while exercising their own authorities and respecting each other’s jurisdiction.” I commend the Premier for his consistent and strong message on behalf of the 17th Assembly.
I was also taken back by the size and the scope of the conference topics such as social suffering, managing and creating capacity, fracking, resource management and economic wellness. It was clear that the overarching theme of finding pathways to prosper was indeed befitting, given the economic setbacks faced by many in the Northwest Territories. One particular session I attended was called “Can territorial government foster economic wellness”. Particularly interesting was the premise that one could measure our economy by virtue of its wellness or social wellness. In essence, these governments that strive for strong social wellness behaviour had a much better capacity for achieving a stronger economic future; a simple message but a very meaningful outcome.
Finding ways to balance amidst poverty, political development and economic opportunity is no small feat. Yet, I believe this conference captured quite nicely all the major roadblocks at work while keeping a lens on prosperity.
Mr. Speaker, again, my congratulations for all the hard work behind the scenes in preparing for such a large-scale and successful conference. The delegates have all returned home and I know that many of them are using their newly minted tools for a better Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Today I wish to congratulate the newly elected Village of Fort Simpson councillors and the DEA council. But firstly, congratulations to Mr. Mayor Sean Whelly, who was acclaimed as mayor of Fort Simpson. It shows the confidence residents have in him by returning him for a second term. Congratulations to the newly elected Village of Fort Simpson council members: Mr. Larry Campbell, Mr. Robert Hanna, Mrs. Leah Keats, Ms. Marie Lafferty, Mr. Ron McCagg, Mrs. Stella Nadia, Mrs. Renalyn Pascau-Matte and Mr. Tom Wilson.
I also commend those who were not elected, for putting their name forward, and a big thank you to those councillors not re-elected, who dedicated their time and effort in serving the Village of Fort Simpson for the past three years.
Congratulations to DEA members elected and re-elected: Mrs. Elizabeth Hardisty, Mrs. Mary Isaiah, Ms. Tanya Klassen, Ms. Martina Norwegian, Ms. Marion Storm and Mr. Rock Matte. I wish you every success in your term. Mahsi cho.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Mackenzie River will soon be freezing and Tsiigehtchic will be cut off from Inuvik by road, and Fort McPherson too, for that matter. We love this time of year, and not just because it’s the only period that a nurse is stationed in Tsiigehtchic. I wonder how many years my predecessor and I have been asking for that nurse to stay put in Tsiigehtchic year round. It seems that our pleas and that of the local leadership are falling on deaf ears.
I’m willing to give the current Health Minister the benefit of the doubt, since he’s only been in the office for a year. He could become famous in the Mackenzie Delta if he finds a way to station a permanent nurse in Tsiigehtchic. The Minister probably remembers that the idea made its way into the Health and Social Services 2010-11 business plan, only to be forgotten ever since.
A local nurse would improve health care in Tsiigehtchic and reduce the need for so much travel to Inuvik and beyond. I think a local nurse would help people get attention to their medical needs earlier, before they become critical. This is one of our main goals for improving our health care system.
Back in May I said that housing is no longer a problem, Mr. Speaker. The community has set aside housing for a nurse.
We’re coming up to next year’s budget and I want to go on record today. I’m urging the Health Minister to please include funds for a nurse in Tsiigehtchic. The allocation would go to the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority which has been administered by his department for some years now. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday my colleagues had the opportunity to speak about treatment centres and day shelters, homeless shelters here in Yellowknife. I do agree with them; Inuvik does have an issue and it’s something that needs be addressed. In Yellowknife here, you just need to walk down to the corner to see the issues that present themselves to the capital of the Northwest Territories. We all have to work together to find solutions to these problems of homelessness, addictions, mental health, but we can’t forget about the regional centres and we can’t forget about the communities.
I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion here in Yellowknife about a month ago when we were going through our business sessions. Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased to hear about all the services that are provided in Yellowknife. Although we have a big population here, the services that are provided here don’t exist in the small communities or the regions. I am just going to list off a few here; the YWCA at Rockhill, the Salvation Army, Centre for Northern Families, the John Howard Society, the youth centre ministries, also known as SideDoor Youth Centre, the Bailey House and the Betty House, just to name a few. I’m sure there’s more.
If we go to the communities, Fort Simpson, Hay River, Norman Wells, we don’t have those types of infrastructures or services to provide to our people that need it. We can’t forget about the communities or the regional centres who are dealing with issues like this.
Mr. Speaker, I made my statement today because it did sound like Yellowknife has a really big issue and they do and we need to find solutions and support them. But outside of Yellowknife, we have 32 other communities that do need the help too.
When it comes to implementing services such as detox centres, treatment centres and homeless shelters, service providers from the communities want to hear more of a commitment rather than a maybe yes, maybe no answer to these much needed services in the communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to talk today a little bit on one of my favourite topics: decentralization.
We’ve been talking about this a lot and I’d like to thank the Premier and Minister Ramsay, who recently took the time to meet with a delegation from Hay River, including MLA Bouchard, myself, the then-acting mayor and representative from the Chamber of Commerce, and the town SAO who came up to Yellowknife and discussed several issues, but one of them, and one of the very important ones, of course, was decentralization.
I don’t need to tell people I’ve been around this place a long time, and although this has been the cry of Members from outside of Yellowknife for many years, I am very pleased to report that we are starting to see some sincere and concrete commitment and movement on the part of this Cabinet to realize some decentralization of some of the programs, services, positions and activities that normally would occur in the capital to the other regions.
I can’t go into detail at this time, of course, because some of these things haven’t been announced yet, but I think I can safely say there’s been some groundwork done in terms of determining the capacity that communities outside of Yellowknife have to accommodate workers. They’ve looked at office space, they’ve looked at housing, they‘ve looked at space in schools. This government has begun to look at those things and we are expecting to see some early results from some of that work that’s been done.
You know, decentralization isn’t just about government jobs and government departments. It’s the mindset of the government, that when they’re planning anything, that they think of how we can benefit and fairly distribute those activities outside of the capital, even things like holding meetings. There are a lot of meetings that go on that are undertaken by government departments. I mean, even that is decentralization, if smaller gatherings can be sent out to be held in the communities.
I’d like to thank Minister Abernethy for choosing Hay River as the location of the first gathering of the anti-poverty roundtable, and they came down to Hay River and subsequently met in Inuvik. These are the concrete kinds of things that I think this government can do to demonstrate that they do care about sustainable, vibrant communities outside of the capital. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. How many of us have sat in the waiting room at the motor vehicle office watching Food Network while we’re waiting to renew our driver’s licence or vehicle registration? And only if you’re from a large centre do you get that chance, because if you’re from a small centre you don’t have the chance to sit and watch the Food Network while you sit for a long period of time to get that driver’s licence renewed.
Quite frankly, this is a service that should be moving to go on-line. In many provinces across Canada, residents, in the comfort of their own homes, in front of their own TVs and computers can renew their own licences, cancel their vehicles, licence, registration, schedule road and knowledge tests, request driver records, discard vehicle and cancel temporary licence and registration. They can change the address on their driver’s licence, make payments of any other motor vehicle service, request drivers’ abstracts and even, in some cases, replace drivers’ licences and IDs, and that’s all on-line.
The province of Ontario even offers mail service to send you the stickers for your licence plates to do your updated renewal. Even provinces with limited numbers of services provide these types of services to their residents because they feel on-line services are important.
This is the type of information we should be working towards to convey to our citizens. We live in a day and age where we shop on-line, we pay our bills and taxes on-line, we read the latest newspapers, and we even book flights to exotic locations. Some of us have applied to university on-line, and heck, in cases like myself, I’ve even bought paints on-line. But I have no doubt that people are even watching the proceedings of the House on-line from, again, the comfort of their desktop, laptop and even, in some cases, mobile phones.
So with all these fantastic services all provided on-line, it’s time that we move to simple services such as driver abstract options on-line. I think the Department of Transportation could be looking at this on a serious note. Frankly, the issue I see right now is a lot of good citizens here don’t have 45 minutes or longer to go sit down at the DMV for simple services. And if you live in a community, should you be forced to drive an hour just to go get your civil services through the DMV? I think this would be a great leap forward to the citizens of the Northwest Territories and I would think that it would demonstrate that we’re tuned in to territorial issues, this being simply one of them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to welcome a couple of visitors from Norway: Marthe Svensson and Gaute Svensson and their son Edgar. They may be back and forwards from the lobby there. Also, John Stephenson, a constituent of Weledeh. The visitors from Norway are, of course, staying in Weledeh. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Today I’m happy to have my wife present here today. It’s not too often she gets to come down and be here. So it’s good to have you here.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned in my opening statement, I have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services. One of the benefits I mentioned earlier in my statement, what would it really cost to station a nurse in Tsiigehtchic? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If we were to station one nurse in Tsiigehtchic, I would assume that just the cost of the salary would be approximately $120,000 with all the benefits and everything, but we would not be able to station just one nurse in Tsiigehtchic.
What savings does the Health department estimate there would be as a result of reducing travel and some lowering of the need for critical care?
According to the integrated service delivery model we are using and have been using for a while that we are updating, there would be a savings of travel, that’s true, of medical travel and so on. To what degree I don’t have that information here with me, because we haven’t tested that to the degree where we are trying to put a service in Tsiigehtchic, but we haven’t cost out to what degree that would save by having a registered nurse in Tsiigehtchic at this time.
Will the Minister station a licenced practical nurse in Tsiigehtchic on a full-time basis as a pilot project?
We are actually looking at that. What we are doing with the integrated service delivery model is determining what service is most often needed in each of the communities, going right from the smallest community to the largest community, and what is the most common service that is required. Within that model what we do is determine how much service, how many nurses are needed in each community. Then we have the issue of safety, and within that issue the Canadian Association of Nursing has one criterion, I suppose, in as far as the amount of population that would be needed to accommodate a nurse. What they’re saying is that because there is, we are not allowed to place one nurse in a station by themselves due to safety reasons, that we need at least two nurses and you have to have a population of at least 250 people in one location in order to accommodate two nurses, whether they are registered nurses or LPNs.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister budget for one nurse and one LPN in Tsiigehtchic as part of the budget for 2013-2014?
As I indicated, we are looking at that. We need to determine the needs by how using that integrated service delivery model will, again, determine the scope of practice that is presented to every community through all the of physician fields. With that model we have to make that decision to use our resources where they have the greatest impact. We’re not pleased that we have communities that do not have nursing, there’s no question about it, but we have to make the right decision. It’s very difficult to pay people on a full-time basis for doing nothing. That’s what happens sometimes when you have a population base that’s too small and too many resources to respond to that population base.
However, we’ve talked about the idea if you do have individual nurses in Tsiigehtchic, they’re 20 minutes away on the road to a larger populated area, being Fort McPherson. So we may actually have to work with both communities in order to try to accommodate a nurse being located in Tsiigehtchic. Again, working with the authority and the department, we’re trying to look at all those models. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
