Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m trying to get a sense, although I see the money is not carried forward into the main estimates. I remember being at the launch of the wait times reduction money, and what type of evaluation or what type of results did we actually see from it? I’m very curious on that. I mean, there must be some type of overall review now that the money has come and gone. I mean, to me, I didn’t see any impact or change in, sort of, the system itself, so did the department do an actual review as to what the deliverable money caused, changed, affected, or improved?

Many of these employees have 10, 20 and 25 years of experience. They don’t meet their numbers, so in other words, they’re too young to retire, they don’t have enough years in the public service to qualify, so even if they wanted to take early retirement, they don’t qualify. Some are being offered these eight-month training programs and told good luck after that. There have been a few who have been able to hit their numbers and said the only option for them is to retire, obviously.

I’m asking the Premier, would he be willing to use his authority at the Cabinet table to direct appoint these...

I think it all links back to the reciprocal billing.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to acknowledge Mr. Wally Schumann, who is also the owner of Poison Painting. It’s good to see him. As well, I wish to acknowledge Mr. Bob Wilson who is a good friend and certainly a dedicated Yellowknifer and an amazing photographer as well. Thank you.

I appreciate the comment there that they will provide that information. Is the Minister in a position to speak about the disallowances in 2008-09? It looked like about $34,000 in 2009-10, $52,000 the following year. The following year of 2010-11 is $610,000 but there is no information or allocation for the years 2010-11 and 2012-13. Thank you.

I’m curious. How do we know the capacity level there is appropriate? I thought we also worked and serviced Nunavut equipment as well. Can the Minister speak to that? Thank you.

Is the Minister saying, so I understand, that there is availability at all times and we are not refusing clients or we are not booking them further down the road for treatment or therapy, whatever the particular case may be, because of the availability of staff? Is he saying that there is more than enough staff and capacity built into our Stanton facility to address for those types of anomalies? As I understand it, they will travel for a week or close to a week servicing these things. That said, I just want to make sure that our residents aren’t waiting unnecessarily, aren’t able to book...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Dolynny’s questions kind of got me wondering and I’m aware of some of the reciprocal billing problems with Nunavut and sometimes there have been many occasions where they just outright refused the bills and refused to pay. Of course, there was a gap in that and I know that had been somewhat sorted out a number of years ago. What year I don’t remember exactly, but I am familiar that that had been sorted out. So we had been actually subsidizing the Nunavut citizen and I do have some great concerns about this process, just in general, because does it come at a cost...

So, in essence, we would be paying our own fees. Would they just apply back to the Government of the Northwest Territories and through their signed contracts and we would just pick up the costs?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to recognize Ally MacInnis on the official record. She’s a Page from Yellowknife Centre and I missed her under recognitions of visitors in the gallery. It’s been my understanding she’s been here almost two weeks as a Page. This is her second round being a Page. I reminded her there are several Members who were Pages, such as Mr. Ramsay, Mr. Abernethy, Ms. Colette Langlois, who is our Clerk, and certainly ourselves, and we can’t forget Mr. Bromley. You never know, she may want to come back someday as an MLA. Thank you very much to Ms. MacInnis for helping us...