Debates of June 13, 2012 (day 15)

Date
June
13
2012
Session
17th Assembly, 3rd Session
Day
15
Speaker
Members Present
Hon. Glen Abernethy, Hon. Tom Beaulieu, Ms. Bisaro, Mr. Blake, Mr. Bouchard, Mr. Bromley, Mr. Dolynny, Mrs. Groenewegen, Mr. Hawkins, Hon. Jackie Jacobson, Hon. Jackson Lafferty, Hon. Bob McLeod, Hon. Robert McLeod, Mr. Menicoche, Hon. Michael Miltenberger, Mr. Moses, Mr. Nadli, Hon. David Ramsay, Mr. Yakeleya
Topics
Statements

QUESTION 148-17(3): APPEALED DECISIONS OF EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS OFFICERS

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to return to my questions to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment because I think he provided some really good overviews to the questions I asked. I’m hoping this round he would provide the answers to them. What I want to do is come back to my very last question in which I asked him if the government monitors the decisions made by our employment standards office that are actually taken and appealed to the Supreme Court. The reason I ask that is there may be some reasons why people are consistently appealing them or have problems with them. There may be a lot of things we could be learning from them. My question, of course, goes back to that issue. Does the government monitor the appeals taken to the Supreme Court, to try to understand better, why these particular decisions are appealed and, if so, what is he able to provide my office, in the sense of showing that they do this, and consider the problems that arise from decisions being appealed?

Speaker: MR. SPEAKER

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The Member is asking for more detailed information and I can provide that to the Member on the process itself, how many appeals have been processed and so forth. I don’t have the specific details of the information on the monitoring mechanism, and I need to highlight to the Member in writing, and I will definitely get back to the Member. Mahsi.

I want to thank the Minister for that very good answer on the particular last question. As I pointed out earlier about wanting some more information as to what type of training we’ve provided, and as I’ve highlighted, do we provide basic administrative law training, guidance on decision-making? Would the Minister be able to provide some type of reference package, sort of a broader overview, not everything, of course, but a broad overview as to what type of reference material, strengthening and ongoing training do we provide to these folks who have to make these statutory decisions that are quite extensive, quite strong in the sense of power, and can be quite expensive if they need to be appealed? Thank you.

I already committed to provide that information and just providing those tools to those individuals who are in the officer positions, whether it be an employment standards officer or other statutory officer, the training that’s been required and various training that is being offered to them. We can have a breakdown of that selective training that’s been offered and what they’re entitled to. We’ll definitely provide that detailed information. Thank you.

Speaker: MR. SPEAKER

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Dolynny.