Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Every day in the news we hear troubling stories about poverty, violence, abuse and neglect, but they are not stories from far-off, distant lands. They are stories that affect the lives of Aboriginal peoples right here in Canada.
For anyone with a conscience, it should be deeply disturbing about the abuses of residential schools and the terrible living conditions in communities like Attawapiskat law enforcement to be concerned about the disappearance of countless Aboriginal women, or the destruction of our land and water by big industries engaging in practises such as fracking. But think of it this way: For every big news, there are many, many untold stories of suffering. In 2007 the UN passed its Declaration on Indigenous Rights, which set a standard for the treatment of Aboriginal peoples by government worldwide. I think it says a lot about how the federal government abuses Aboriginal people, and Canada was only one of four nations out of 148 that did not support the declaration when it was adopted.
Canada has since shown support for the declaration, but as the UN Rapporteur reminded us this month, Canada’s treatment of the human rights of its Aboriginal peoples leaves a lot of room for improvement. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why there’s a sense of mistrust between Aboriginal peoples and the federal, provincial and territorial governments of Canada.
Federal and GNWT policies on First Nations land claims and self-governments state that they aim for certainty and finality, yet progress towards the completion of these claims is so slow it is spanning generations. The GNWT has promised that it will work with all First Nations on the Intergovernmental Council on Land and Resource Management, based on the Devolution Agreement. We have assurances that devolution will not change the fundamental relationship of the Crown with First Nations people. How can we trust these assurances when so many promises to the Aboriginal people of Canada have been broken or left in unrest?
Perhaps it is time for the federal, provincial and territorial governments of Canada to support establishing a tribunal with First Nations peoples and governments to resolve impasses, conflicts and disputes. This would create a mechanism for mediation to resolve disputes more effectively than the courts can. Maybe then we could really put behind the injustices of the past and also set up the relationship between Aboriginal people and the Government of Canada, a new frame of trust for moving into the future. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Cavities, toothaches, bad breath and painful extractions that might have been prevented, these things aren’t talked about very often. Unfortunately, though, oral health problems are very common amongst my constituents. With a simple legislative change to the Dental Auxiliaries Act and a promise from our government to invest in visits to small communities, residents could receive timely and valuable dental care.
In nearly every Canadian province, dental hygienists are allowed to work independently. They aren’t required to work under the direction of a dentist. In the NWT dental hygienists don’t even have that freedom. This means NWT residents are not benefiting from a range of services offered elsewhere in Canada.
Better alternatives are available. One example is the use of interim stabilization therapy. This is basically a temporary filling to relieve pain and halt the progression of tooth decay. This type of therapy can be performed by dental hygienists in most provinces and it should be performed by hygienists here too.
A simple legislative change has the potential to prevent a great deal of pain and expense associated with tooth decay and gum disease. We should make it possible for hygienists to practise independently. This would be a win-win prospect. Residents would benefit and so would dental hygienists. People of all ages would have timely access to oral health care and it could be served in a variety of settings, from schools and community health centres to private clinics in people’s own homes. They could receive more regular checkups starting at an early age.
Dental hygienists have a proven record of innovative service delivery and they could do a world of good in our small communities. The Northwest Territories needs to bring its legislation in line with the majority of the Canadian provinces. I will have questions for the Health Minister at the appropriate time. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Mr. Speaker, when I was visiting constituents this summer, as I do each summer, I heard a number of complaints about this government, which should really be no surprise to anyone in this building. In fact, there were so many complaints about this government I don’t know if I can fit them all in, even in replies to the opening address.
However, particular attention was paid to this government’s lack of attention to families and their bottom line. People told me devolution is important over the long haul, but they can’t make the short haul, so the long-haul details really don’t matter.
In particular, families are struggling day by day and, when they see our cost of living go up to number one, they don’t like being number one. Who wouldn’t want to be number one in the real world, but when it comes to your power bills, they don’t like being number one.
We certainly have to thank the Premier, in his old role as Minister Bob McLeod, because Bob McLeod helped move our power bills in the method that they are going. He deserves the credit for this, and let me explain why.
A few short years ago, Members will recall the power rates were engineered so that they would be lower in the communities, but locked-in in Yellowknife. Let me be the first to say that the communities struggle day to day and certainly their power bills are no envy of anyone. In fact, if you’re not on the hydro grid, I don’t know how you survive. I believe it’s very necessary to pay particular attention to those problems and I certainly support solutions that work toward that.
Affordable living is a challenge everywhere in the Northwest Territories, but government does what government does. I’m not disagreeing with the first part. That took a bit of courage, but it’s the second time they have had to look at what else happened. So they were artificially lowered, and somebody had to pick up the costs somewhere.
What happened was power rates in Yellowknife were frozen, but what they didn’t tell is – and here it is – the rate riders in Yellowknife were just about to fall off. So in other words, they locked us in at a higher rate. Then they shifted the administrative burden from the regional centres to Yellowknife. Again, the cost of living continues to go up.
When you compare apples to apples, Yellowknife to Iqaluit, Yellowknife to Whitehorse, Yellowknife to even Barrow, Alaska, guess what, we’re number one. Our power bills are horrible. We want to do something about real-life working families who struggle to get by day after day. This Cabinet needs to come down from its perches and big salaries and lofty offices and see what it’s like for the living families to struggle each and every day.
I won’t have softball questions today for the Ministers, but they will be getting a bit of a push from me, that’s for sure.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to recognize some of the recipients that are here in the gallery. First of all I’d like to recognize the Youth category, Justin Memogana is here with us from Kugluktuk. His brother Chad is here with us as well. Also, the Elder’s category that is here with us, Emily Kudlak from Ulukhaktok as well. In the Group category I’d like to recognize from the Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute Alestine Andre, Bertha Francis, Ingrid Kritsch and Robert Alexie Sr., who are here with us today. Also, Minister’s Choice, Yellowknife Choral Society, and here with us today are Lorne Gushue, Ruth McLean, Constantina Tsetsos and Margo Nightingale. Also with our department here with us are Karen Wright-Fraser and Ashley Green. Welcome to the Assembly. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize my constituents: Alestine Andre, from Tsiigehtchic; Bertha Francis and Robert Alexie Sr., of Fort McPherson; along with Ingrid Kritsch, who are the recipients of the Minister’s Culture and Heritage Circle Award. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize all of the winners of the Culture and Heritage Awards today. Congratulations to them and, particularly in the House today, members of the Yellowknife Choral Society, some of the members, and I know Constantina Tsetsos is there, a resident of Weledeh, as well as Lorne Gushue and Ruth McLean, Margo Nightingale, I don’t know if Margaret Peterson made it or not. So congratulations, and I don’t know if Jennifer Young is there. I can’t see everybody behind me, but she is one of the co-founders of the Yellowknife group Face to Face. It’s a support group for people suffering from the loss of infants during pregnancy. So I’d like to recognize Jennifer as well. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to congratulate and welcome all the recipients of the Culture and Heritage Awards today, specifically the Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute, and also welcome Karen Wright-Fraser, who is a relative and who has been a very strong advocate for cultural contributions and the prolonging of the Gwich’in culture. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize a number of people today. Karen Wright-Fraser is a constituent of Frame Lake. Congratulations, Karen, on your award and welcome to the Assembly. I would also like to recognize the members of the Yellowknife Choral Society who are here and congratulate them on their award. Lorne Gushue, Ruth McLean, Constantina Tsetsos and Margo Nightingale, your hard work is obviously recognized. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think we’re going to fight over Karen here because I thought she lives downtown. With that said, she is certainly worthy of the prize to fight for; she is such a great lady. I want to start off by recognizing Karen Wright-Fraser. She is known for a lot of things, not particularly because she worked with me a long time ago, but she is a talented artist in her own right and very well renowned. Her skill is amazing and she has great talent at keeping her traditional life.
The other constituent that I’d like to acknowledge, and who has been acknowledged several times already, is Lorne Gushue. He’s a community activist in many ways, a stalwart volunteer on so many efforts, we don’t have time to go through every single one of them. I can tell you we spent a lot of time talking about what a great community fellow he is and to that end I say thank you to both and welcome.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Today several outstanding Northerners were recognized in representing our arts, culture and heritage across our great territory. I really would like to welcome Mr. Justin Memogana and his brother Chad from Ulukhaktok. Welcome to the House. That is drummer dancers that, when we were up at our Caucus retreat, all these members were drum dancing while we were up in Ulukhaktok. That was our main drummer right there. I know your dad would be really proud of you, so congratulations again.
Ms. Emily Kudlak, thank you for your Elders Category Award. Thank you for all you do for the community of Ulukhaktok. I know you are always active in the community with our youth, so thank you and keep up the good work. Thank you.
Welcome everybody in the House here today for taking in our proceedings and to all of you, congratulations on behalf of our House. Thank you very much for being there for us, especially our elders.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to recognize Weledeh resident and former Premier, Stephen Kakfwi, who received the Governor General’s Northern Medal on October 4, 2013, in Quebec City. The highly regarded award was established to honour Canadians whose actions and achievements contribute to the North. Originally from Fort Good Hope, Mr. Kakfwi spent 16 years as a Sahtu MLA and served as a Cabinet Minister and the first Premier of the NWT after Nunavut was created.
On behalf of Weledeh residents and the people of the Northwest Territories, I would like to congratulate Mr. Kakfwi and his family for his accomplishments, and thank him for his continued important contributions to the people of the North. Mahsi.
---Applause
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement and certainly reading here Mr. Dolynny having an exchange with Mr. Ramsay last week in regards to driver education programming in our school, I want to ask the Minister if he’s given some serious consideration with his colleague, the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Is this something we can look forward to putting on a piece of paper saying by next year, if we put our heads together and the will of the people and the will of the department, we can have a driver education training program in one of our small communities?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We recognize the regional disparity in numbers of young people in the territory that have a driver’s licence of one form or another, Class 7, Class 5 probationary, or Class 5 licence between Yellowknife, Hay River, Fort Smith and the other communities in the territory. Certainly, we need to do something about that. The department is taking this challenge seriously. We have Project Gearshift that we’re allowing participation in schools. We are going to cover up to $3,000 or 50 percent of the cost for them to host professional driver trainers in their communities. We believe that’s going to certainly be a step in the right direction.
Going back a number of years, we had driver training in some of the high schools here in the Northwest Territories. Given what is happening today in the central Mackenzie Valley in Norman Wells and with the pending construction of the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk highway, the Member’s concern about trying to get some type of program into a high school in Inuvik and Norman Wells certainly has merit. Thank you.
Certainly, we want to close the gap on the disparity within our regions. We know not all regions are created equal, so I want to ask the Minister with regard to the driver education training program, is this something that he and his colleagues, specifically the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, can look at as a pilot project in the Sahtu, for example, to raise the challenge with our young people to have one of these types of drivers’ licences for next year?
Mr. Speaker, high school students in Yellowknife and Hay River can still receive two credits toward their high school diploma by taking professional driver training, but that is only available in Yellowknife and Hay River. That, again, is part of the reason we’re looking at Project Gearshift, to get the professional driver instruction outside of those two communities and to young people across the Territories so they can get drivers’ licences. We’re also developing flashcards and an app that is based on the NWT Drivers Manual. I believe in responding to Mr. Dolynny last week, these will be available sometime early in the new year. We believe that will go a long way to helping students pass their driver’s test when the examiner does get into their community. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, would the driver education program have a schedule in a Sahtu community high school for these driver education training programs, that every so often the instructors will be coming into these schools where there’s incentive to receive a credit, get to school, and every three months that in one of the Sahtu communities you’ll know these young students will be receive one type of driver’s licence. It will do a lot of wonderful things in terms of increasing their self-esteem, once they get a driver’s licence.
Mr. Speaker, with the economic activity construction happening in the Mackenzie Delta and also the activity that’s taking place in the Sahtu, it certainly is in our best interest to ensure that, at the high school level, youth have access to getting… One of the fundamentals is a driver’s licence. I think the more we can do that, the better off our young people will be and better able to get employment. I think, at the end of the day, really that is what this is all about, is independence and getting employment for young people across the territory.
On Project Gearshift, that would have to be initiated by schools. Again, it’s funding; it’s a program that’s available to schools. So schools, whether they’re in Inuvik or Norman Wells, can certainly apply for the funding that is available through Project Gearshift. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to see a program stronger than Project Gearshift, but that we actually have a program in our schools that would allow a driver education program for our youth, that they actually not wait for funding but initiate it. Schools are always competing for funding and other initiatives, and sometimes we’re not quite there as we’d like to be in regards to having funding for the schools.
Is this something that they could look at more concrete that could be a pilot project, so say this could work, especially in the Sahtu where there’s oil and gas activity that’s going to be flourishing in the next couple of years?
Thank you. The discussions have already begun between ECE and DOT. We will continue to have discussions. In the past these programs ended because of concerns with liability and also logistical concerns.
I think these are things we can get over and we should get over. If there’s a real need in a community like Norman Wells or Inuvik or other communities around the NWT, this is something that we have to get our heads around. Certainly, we can continue the discussions and I will do that through the Minister and the education board both in the Beaufort-Delta and in the Sahtu. We’ll continue and see where we can get these discussions and keep Members apprised of where we get with the program. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, the last couple weeks I spent some time at the Hay River hospital, l and I forgot to thank them.
My questions today are for the Minister of Health. Last spring the Minister had talked about making some changes to the authority and giving Hay River some feedback. I’m wondering if we could create kind of a community-driven authority where the community could give feedback. Is there something, a board that they’re looking at setting up where the communities can have feedback? I know right now we have a public administrator, but is there any thought to putting something like that in place?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the thought is to return to a board structure for the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. As the Member knows, we are in the process of constructing a new health centre and we’re hoping to be able to provide some medical services to surrounding communities. So once we’ve determined the full scope of what that specific health centre can provide to the surrounding areas, then we are going to talk more with the staff and the public administrator to determine what type of board structure we should have in place for Hay River Health and Social Services. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the Minister’s answer there. The Minister talked about the new facility. Do we have to wait for that facility to get that kind of feedback from the general public? We’re looking for some sort of feedback that the public can give on the current operations in the current facility, as well, and what kind of timeline we’re looking at in order for implementation of that type of an advisory board.
No, it’s not essential that we wait for the health centre to be completed in order to have some sort of board structure. The public administrator and I did discuss that possibility. He recommended that we start off by maybe asking a couple of people from Hay River on the recommendation of maybe even the municipality, the MLAs or even the Aboriginal organizations’ area to appoint people that he could start working with and having some discussions. That’s something that we are currently contemplating. I’ve had my first discussion on that type of structure, I would say, about two months ago with the public administrator. Thank you.
Thank you. Obviously, in the health care industry it’s very important to have consistency. I guess a question I would have about that authority is also the promotion and recruitment of doctors.
I’m wondering if the department has been in discussion any further. I know the Minister has talked in this House about a centralized doctors’ recruitment facility. I’m just wondering where the department is currently in that discussion with the Hay River authority.
As the Member knows, we’ve recently moved the CEO to a position with Health and Social Services. We have an acting CEO and then there’s going to be a new CEO for Hay River coming on stream within weeks. I’ve had that discussion with all of the Joint Senior Management Committee – that’s all of the CEOs across all of the jurisdictions and some senior staff with Health and Social Services – and made it a priority. One of the top three priorities for the health system is recruitment of doctors.
Plan A for the recruitment of doctors would be to recruit doctors in the communities where they will be working. Plan B would be to move doctors from those communities to live in Yellowknife, but again, our intention is to continue with plan A and push the idea of having doctors brought into a place like Hay River. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister’s answer there and I appreciate the concept, but how much of a priority is it to assist the authority in promotion of the community itself and to get a doctor in place? I understand the concept of a central unit, but obviously in this House we have concerns about decentralization and we want to see that in the communities.
How much is the department pushing the recruitment of doctors in the communities versus a centralized doctor pool?
Thank you. That is the ultimate way to go. We recognize that the doctors will be living in the communities where they’re serving, so that continues to be our push. When I talked to all of the Joint Senior Management Committee a couple of weeks ago, I did talk only about trying to get doctors into a community. The new CEO that will be coming on is very versed in bringing in and talking to doctors and trying to hire doctors and so on. We also have a support system in Health and Social Services that will help the communities and CEOs recruit doctors for their communities. That continues to be the number one priority for us as far as doctor recruitments go. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
QUESTION 380-17(4):
WHISTLEBLOWER
PROTECTION LEGISLATION
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a follow-up to my Member’s statement earlier today, my questions will be directed to the Minister of Justice.
If my memory serves me correctly, the current Minister of Justice was interested in full-blown whistleblower protection or legislation when he was an Ordinary Member. So there should be no big surprises here in the House today. However, one of the surprises is the lack of progress this government and department has undertaken since tabling a discussion paper on whistleblower protection back in 2007.
Can the Minister of Justice please inform this House why there was little to no action on whistleblower legislation after the 2007 discussion paper? Thank you.
