Robert Hawkins

I’m just talking about… I wish to ensure that it’s clear that I enjoy the principle and certainly would support the principle of franchising voting opportunities by all extents. I just wanted to be clear on that someone is not taking advantage of a situation where we have, for example, 10 beds one day and then 10 new people come in and they get to vote under that address, and then the next day 10 new people get to vote under that address and then so on and so on and so on. In theory, in a 28-day election if it was 10 beds, 10 new people every day, you could have 280 votes out of one address...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Mr. Bromley.

In the 2011 election, residents of 11 communities had only one opportunity to vote: on polling day itself. Residents of these communities are to be commended for the generally strong voter turnouts. However, all residents of the Northwest Territories should have comparable voting opportunity.

The committee requested that the CEO develop detailed recommendations for a new special voting opportunity to replace the provisions for advance polls in communities without a resident returning officer and populations of less than 500. The committee is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The issue I want to ask questions on today is a continuation of my Member’s statement. During my Member’s statement I talked about the importance of a health care card that is secure. I’ve promoted the idea before and I’ve done a fair bit of research recently. I found it quite interesting that British Columbia actually has a photo I.D. health care card, but what’s interesting about theirs in particular is they include their driver’s licence on it as well. It simplifies one’s life.

Ontario has been doing this since 2007 and they have many and critical pieces we don’t have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to use the opportunity here to return to a subject I’ve raised in this House before and it’s the health care card issue.

In the past I’ve raised with the Health Minister, more accurately the former Health Minister, about the need to move towards photo ID cards. As many of us will remember, and certainly want to forget, the last health care card renewal was no thrill with any standard we should be looking back to as a benchmark. So we should use this opportunity to be planning forward with better health care cards.

The recent issue of cards, I believe, are good...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I referred to health care cards that are from Ontario as well as British Columbia. I have two samples. I have one sample here from Ontario – it’s a two-page document in colour – and I have a second sample here on a document from British Columbia. All people will be able to note the details that I discussed here and certainly the aspects the Minister of Health has agreed to investigate.

Thank you. That’s an awful tough answer to come back to because that was pretty much everything I wanted. So the only other thing that I would ask is it’s important, as I pointed out, that British Columbia links it to their driver’s licence.

So, just to be very clear, did the Minister, and I saw him nodding his head, but I’ll let him speak to this issue, that they work with the Department of Transportation to find out if this is something they could progress to merge towards a one-card system that makes sense?

The last thing, Mr. Speaker, is I’ve already got pretty much what I wanted, unless he...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, wish to welcome Byrne Richards, certainly a community advocate and very well known to all of us. I want to also use the occasion to recognize Paul McDonald. I used to be a neighbour of his, and a little known talent of his was he was a clown, so all the students there with him here today… No clowning around. He was a professional clown. He may have been both. I’ll leave it with the students to see if they can get some gags and tricks out of him, but he’s quite the gentleman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I think of fracking, I’m often reminded of the saying “you can’t unring a bell.” What that basically means is that once you’ve done it, you’ve done it and you can’t take it back. As we all have come to learn, fracking is certainly not for everyone and not for every region where it could happen. So it puts the utmost importance upon each and every one of us to consider this problem.

Do we do it right or do we do it because we want it? I think this opportunity here is the chance to do it right. Everyone knows industry’s interests and industry wouldn’t be here in the...

Mr. Chairman, who is picking up the cost for branding?

Are we in the maintenance business if there are problems with the iPad? Thank you.