Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d also like to recognize Dr. Andre Corriveau, a resident of Weledeh and a well-known member of Yellowknife; also Julie Green who is also well known for all her work on the many social issues including the poverty one, but all the related ones, as well, housing and so on. Thanks to those for attending today. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I welcome everybody here in the public gallery today. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on my statement and ask some questions to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. When I questioned the Minister previously, he told me that he would consider reviewing policy. I’d like to ask the Minister, to start off, considering the information regarding locked-in RRSPs right across the country, will he consider revising our income support policy with regards to registered retirement savings plans? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Within our policy there are amendments every now and then, and this is an area that I spoke to last week I believe it was. Making some changes to a policy obviously comes from the general public’s feedback and also the MLAs. If there is an area that we need to make some changes, then there is an opportunity to do so.
To the Minister: I guess I would say that if there is a willingness to make changes, this would seem to me to be a change that should be made sooner rather than later. The Minister seems to suggest that he has to wait for changes to be suggested from the public or from us as MLAs. Well, I’m making the suggestion. It seems to me that the policy says that it’s okay to save for certain things but it’s not okay to save for other things.
If the money is not available to be cashed in, I’d like to ask the Minister, will he not wait for more complaints but will he, in the next month, look at revising this policy?
When we speak to income support and Income Assistance program, it is a program of last resort that helps the most vulnerable of community members in the Northwest Territories. When I speak of vulnerable citizens, I mean those that do not have anything to fall back on as opposed to RRSP, that there is financial support that is available to them.
We have to be very careful how we deal with policy changes when it comes to these particular areas. That’s why I am very cautious of changing the policies with respect to this particular area that we are faced with.
I can appreciate that we need to be cautious, but I only asked the Minister if he would consider looking at revising the policy.
I would like to ask the Minister if he would like me to forward the information on RRSPs in other jurisdictions which I have gathered.
Any information that the Members can contribute to our decision-making will be valuable. Also, my department, obviously, has done some research, as well, so we can compile all that information, and if changes are necessary then we have to seriously look at those areas.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister: I guess if his department has done some research, he should know by now that we are out of step with the rest of the country, and I think we ought to get back in step.
I asked the Minister a number of weeks ago whether or not there’s a cost to the department to allow somebody to keep their RRSP to allow them to have something to fall back on when they eventually retire or when they get to old age.
I would like to ask the Minister, again, is there, in his mind, any cost to the government for allowing an individual to keep their RRSP?
Anytime we do a payment plan or subsidy to our clientele, obviously, there is a cost factor to it. I don’t have the actual figures because this is the first of its kind of RRSP clientele requesting income security area. We need to do further work in this area of the cost factor. Once the Member is compiling all the information with my department, we should have a clear idea of where we stand on this.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to use the opportunity to ask some questions to the Minister of the Northwest Territories Power Corp about the latest damage and repair process that’s happening. As I see news reports point that it’s costing the NWT Power Corp over $40,000 a day additional to run that operation, that burden is going to fall on someone. Maybe the Minister can highlight what’s being done and how we’ll recover some of that process to make sure that that cost isn’t falling on the NWT residents.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister responsible for the Power Corporation, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. They are looking at the repairs. We, earlier on, made a contribution of $20 million to the Power Corporation to offset some of the diesel requirements due to the low water. This is related but not directly tied to that. However, we had anticipated that we would be saving some money with the lowering price of diesel and that we will be using that $20 million to offset the additional diesel costs as the appropriate repairs are affected. Thank you.
Thank you. What’s the anticipated cost of this particular problem that we have going on right now? Can the Minister qualify the additional cost it’s going to run? Although he’d pointed out how we’re going to pay for it, let’s find out exactly how much we think it’s going to cost. Thank you.
I don’t have a definitive estimate at this point, but I will keep the House up to date when I do get that number. Thank you.
Is the Minister able to speak to the issue of when we think it will be repaired? I mean, I can do my own math at $40,000 a day. The territorial resident needs to appreciate and understand are these parts available, are we going to see the NWT Power Corp run on diesel for how long? That’s part of the issue here, is we’ve got a dedicated service, which only has parts that probably can be sourced from one or two places in the world, who knows where, and we need to appreciate how long and how complex this is. So can the Minister speak to the availability of this? Thank you.
Those are all legitimate, real concerns that we are as well very cognizant of, and as we plan to affect repairs, those are issues that are being addressed. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
If we estimate that this could take – one day is $40,000 – six weeks, that’s almost $1.7 million. This is certainly an expensive meter running at the cost of the NWT taxpayers.
Is the Minister able to update us at all other than what the media report has already covered out there? Otherwise, we’re just sitting in the dark not knowing what’s happening and it’s very difficult to deliver any type of accountability on this particular initiative. It’s not about criticism, it’s about transparency as to what’s happening and what will taxpayers be on the hook for. Thank you.
Thank you. I will commit to provide all the most current information to the Members before the end of the week. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement today on the subject of medical travel for the parents of children who are attending school in southern Canada and diagnosed with serious illnesses. So, for the Minister of Health and Social Services, these youth obviously need a parent with them at this stressful time and normally would be escorted by a parent to their treatments if the child’s travel originated in the NWT. There’s a clear policy gap here. I understand that there’s a review of the medical escort policy underway.
Can the Minister tell me who is conducting the review and if this specific policy gap is being addressed by this review? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We actually have a private organization doing the current review of the medical, or escort portion of the contract. I do forget the name of the provider, but I will get that information for the Member. I have asked the department to make sure that this is one of the issues that’s being discussed. To that point, I’ve also asked that the group that’s doing the review actually get in touch with the family that is in this particular situation. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I know the Minister is keenly interested in this and very open to investigating and considering the various perspectives.
This review is a welcome one, of course, and long overdue. I’m sure that there are many people that could provide valuable insight and have experiences to relate, such as my constituents.
How is the Minister engaging the people of the North for input into this review? Mahsi.
Thank you. I went into some detail on this when we were in front of Committee of the Whole, but at this point the working group has actually gone out to a number of communities in the Northwest Territories. What we’re trying to do is get a small community, a large community and a remote community so we can get a variety of different inputs and opinions. We’re also looking at all the data that’s been gathered on medical travel over many, many, many years. So that’s been thrown into the mix. There will be some discussions with different stakeholders and groups in Yellowknife. They’ve also been in touch with Larga House as somebody who is a recipient of our residents and our escorts.
This particular review is focused around escorts. There’s going to be one later this year on an appeal process and then we’re going to be looking at some other portions of that Medical Travel Policy, as well, as we go through 2015-2016. Thank you.
Thank you to the Minister for his response. I’m sure he’s hearing from MLAs who have constituents with ideas to contribute.
Medical travel insurance for people travelling outside the Territories has been rightly suggested for NWT residents who travel. The issue of SFA, Student Financial Assistance, sponsoring students possibly needing such extra coverage, which could possibly include medical travel support for parents when appropriate, seems to me a special case that could be covered under a group insurance plan included in SFA for sponsored students.
As the Minister responsible for social programs, Health and Social Services, is this idea of group insurance by SFA for NWT students in this situation something he would investigate and consider? Thank you.
I’m not aware of any group insurance that Education, Culture and Employment might provide to students that are on SFA, but I’ve already asked the deputy minister of Health and Social Services to be in touch with the deputy minister of Education, Culture and Employment to find out what, if anything, they do. Once we know, then we will be in a position to have some discussions with Education, Culture and Employment whether that is something that they might possibly be able to do for our students who are travelling south. As I get more information, I will absolutely share that with committee. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister’s initiative. Of course, students are on a budget, so a group plan might be something attractive.
I support the Minister’s review of the Medical Travel Policy including this apparent policy gap under the medical escort travel.
When will the Minister be seeking input on the draft results of the review from committee, and when can we expect it to be completed and implemented? Mahsi.
The initial work being done by the contractor is going to be done, I believe, at the end of March, at which point we will start putting together the results and how we’re going to move forward. Of course, this is a consensus system, so we will be sharing those results and having further discussion with the Members as the report comes in. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll follow up from my Member’s statement and I have questions for the Premier of the Northwest Territories about decentralization.
My first question would be: What is the general plan going forward with decentralization? I know we’ve done the first, second and third phase, what is the general plan going forward from… How do we decentralize these positions into the regions? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very pleased to report to the Member that we have decentralized 150 positions from Yellowknife to the regions, and it has been spread out over a variety of positions.
We have a plan. We’re continuing to work towards fulfilling our plan. We’ve invested $21 million over three years to build 100 houses. We’re now entering our second year of building houses. We are spending $750,000 to have another 100 market houses built in the communities. We are investing $300,000 so that we can use that money for coming up with a plan to acquire office space so that we can no longer use the excuse of not having housing or office space to prevent against decentralization. Of course, we have introduced a Regional Recruitment Strategy so that we can start filling these hard-to-staff positions and also fill those positions that are being decentralized to the regions and to the small communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I understand a lot of the information that’s there that the Premier just provided me, but there is no plan out there. There’s no long-term plan that the Cabinet has been sharing. This is information that Cabinet has, Cabinet’s keeping close to their chest. We’re moving these positions, we’ll be moving these positions eventually here, but we don’t know all those plans. The public doesn’t know those plans.
Is there a plan that the government will be presenting to the public?
We have a plan. We’ve been sharing it. We have a Refocusing Government Cabinet committee and one of its primary focuses is decentralization. The Minister of Finance is the lead Minister on decentralization, and I’m proud to say that Hay River has the second highest number of decentralized positions in this 17th Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I didn’t look for the report and I already indicated in my statement that Hay River is appreciative of the positions we’ve had decentralized. We were looking for the plan, a public document to be presented to the public of the Northwest Territories. Is the government presenting that going forward? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We have laid out the three phases repeatedly. Also, as part of the 2015-16 business planning process, that’s part of phase three where all of the departments, with the exception of those new departments that came through devolution, those three departments will have to come up with their plans for decentralization. So we have a plan. We have been filling and decentralizing positions in this 17th Legislative Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I understand the Premier is giving me all the history and all the information that’s there.
My question is: Is there a one-page document advertising that we can share with the general public that there will be jobs in Fort Res, Tsiigehtchic in the third, fourth year? Is there a document out there? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Fort Resolution has 53 jobs. Tsiigehtchic has 11 jobs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
