Robert Hawkins

The Minister just doesn’t seem to understand the question. I’m not asking or stating that the problem was in sending her to Edmonton. That’s not the problem. The problem is that she had to wait in emergency 34 hours to get a room. There seems to be no concern about an apology to this family. There seems to be no concern or thought as to saying: well, maybe if this hospital is full and if there are no rooms in this hospital, why could we not have sent her somewhere else, be it in Edmonton or Calgary?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my statement today I talked about a woman who had to wait 34 hours in order to be let into a room and suffered from a stroke. She was sent down to Edmonton, as I talked about in my Member’s statement. I felt that this was a disgusting way for government services and funding to show that the standard of health is completely unreasonable and unfair.

My questions will be focused on the Minister of Health and Social Services and specific only to this incident. I want to be very clear. I’d like to know what happened in this situation. I want to know what the Minister is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the Thanksgiving weekend something horrible happened. A young mother in her youthful prime had a stroke, and because of her condition level, she needed to be sent to an Edmonton hospital to meet her needs. So she was medevacked to Edmonton Monday night and arrived around 11 p.m. with her daughter and three month old nursing son in tow.

As anyone can imagine, this is a difficult situation, but what can be noted here at this specific point is that it has the appearance that the system may be working. That is, you get sick, and the publicly funded system, via taxpayer...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I raised a matter that I take very seriously and I find very important. The matter really is about student safety while they’re travelling.

I want to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment: would he look into the matter of making sure there are safety guidelines for all travelling students, and would he work with his partners at the school boards to make sure something could come forward as soon as possible?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve heard I think three times that the schools take care of maintenance, and I appreciate that. That’s not the only issue. It’s an important issue — don’t get me wrong; it really is — but there are more issues. There are issues such as if the coach is the driver. The coach has been coaching all day, all weekend. Then what they do is they drive the team back in the dark, maybe on a cold winter’s day, and they’re exhausted.

Mr. Speaker, with those types of guidelines I’d like us to sort of take a formal approach, bring them together. It’s the guidelines of making sure...

Mr. Speaker, when they travel by school bus, I certainly hope that they are well maintained, et cetera. What this really comes down to is small teams. All big schools can afford big school buses, but when you send a small team…. As I recall very intimately, when I travelled in a small group, we used to take small vans and cars, and they sometimes went without any formal guidelines for safety.

Really, what I’m asking is: would the Minister look into things like guidelines that reflect making sure we have a first-aid kit, making sure the driver, who may be the coach, has a certain amount of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I am raising the topic of safety for students in the NWT. We all know that intercommunity sports and recreation events are an important part of a student’s life experience.

Mr. Speaker, I have many fond memories of travelling with Mr. Rick Tremblay when I was kid to communities for basketball, wrestling and cross-country events. As we all know too well, coaches, team mangers, chaperones and parents often take their teams to other communities in the NWT and Alberta. They make use of their own cars and minivans and sometimes rent vehicles and buses.

Sadly, I need to...

I am well under the understanding that some school boards have certain guidelines. I just want to make sure that the Department of Education is taking some leadership on this issue and some guidance on the bigger issue. I want to make sure that all school boards have a full understanding of the complexity of this problem and that the territorial government supports those complex problems by making sure they have the appropriate equipment so all kids travel to their events and homes safely.

I’m asking the Minister: would he take the initiative, garner what guidelines some schools have, what some...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The issue I wanted to raise today on behalf of my riding is the concern about the lack of public washrooms. People need to be people, and people need personal dignity, and they need to be normal just like you and I.

Mr. Speaker, the issue really is: has this become normalized? I certainly hope it hasn’t. We have to ask ourselves what we are elevating this issue with. Are we dealing with this, or are we ignoring it? The homeless, as well as some of the other street people who spend time at the Salvation Army and other places, need a place to be able to turn to. Businesses...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won’t use a lot of time, but what I want to do is cite timing and process. First on the timing. I really like the timing. One of the complaints I generally hear and can obviously see is that timing is a problem. It’s been cited before, but I think it’s important to put it on the record from my perspective. When we approve the capital budgets at the end of March, it doesn’t get ignited into the realm of reality until April, May, June. Tenders come in; projects don’t start until the fall — those types of problems.

Now, that’s obviously not every project. We know that...