Thank you, Madam Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for Seniors. Over a couple of weeks ago, we had an Elders Parliament here. They went through a lot of work. My experience working with these elders is they are very experienced. One of our values growing up in the North is to respect our elders. I wanted to ask the Minister responsible for Seniors what is his commitment to the motions that were brought forth during the Elders Parliament. How serious is he going to take these motions that put them into action or see something come out of them in this Assembly? Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister responsible for Seniors, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Madam Speaker. To date, I have had the staff – that is my own staff here in the Legislative Assembly – review the Members’ statements to see, firstly, which of those statements and maybe some work that we are actually already working on in Health and Social Services, seniors or the disability files. Thank you.
Madam Speaker, I asked for a commitment to see these recommendations, motions put through in this government, if not sooner. We get a lot of discussions here and I don’t want to have to ask another question and get whether a commitment of yes or no and not discussions. It seems like I’ll have to use a second question to get a yes commitment or a no discussion commitment. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you. I wasn’t thinking that the Elders Parliament was specifically a seniors’ issue, I thought it was an Elders Parliament that was more of a parliamentary thing. So I looked at that from not as a Minister responsible for Seniors, but looked at the Member’s statement for Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Seniors and Persons with Disabilities and said I would ask the staff. I had asked the staff to look at the statements to see which one of those statements pertained to the three areas that I’m responsible for, to see if there wasn’t work already being done in those areas. If there wasn’t, we’re going to review it to see if we can incorporate that, too, if we felt it was within government’s mandate. Thank you.
That was a good answer. As the Minister responsible for Seniors and ensuring that seniors have an accurate and fulfilling life in their early years and be able to continue on our traditions, culture and language, would the Minister be willing to look at these motions and be willing to address them as the Minister responsible for Seniors and not the Minister responsible for what was discussed? It was the seniors who brought this forward, after all. Thank you.
Yes, I’m willing to look at those statements and review them to see if they’re relevant to the work that we could be doing. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. That’s kind of what I wanted to get right off the start. That leads me to my second question. I have a couple here.
As the Minister responsible for Seniors, is he willing to look at the one motion that is relevant to the clientele and people that he represents, and work within his Cabinet to look at the motion in regard to the public housing rental scales in which there were recommendations made from the seniors brought forth by the Seniors’ Society, as well as made from this side of the House? Is he willing to do that and look at addressing that issue?
I know that initially when this issue was being contemplated through the media and so on with elders, I’ve had initial discussion with the Minister of the Housing Corporation. After the motion was made by the elders, we’ve had another discussion. I am prepared to work with the Minister of Housing to look at that decision. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
