Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to return to some of my questions earlier today regarding the power outage that we had on December 29th of 2013. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the purview of looking at Hansard, so I’ll get those tomorrow. I find that earlier today I was rather at the Minister’s mercy and convenience to some of the quasi attempts and answers that we didn’t get, but I wanted to further some questioning regarding the initial incident when the initial power failure occurred.
Was there any failure of equipment, automatic failure of equipment for generators to start us? Was there any feeder failure that caused a cascade of events as the Minister alluded to earlier? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, Mr. Miltenberger.
Yes, Mr. Speaker.
Okay, so now we’re getting somewhere. We did have some feeder problems. If we agree that we did have some issues regarding the system failures, can the Minister elaborate how many other system failures occurred during the three-hour outage? Thank you.
I know the rules of the House are clear in terms of me reading a long, detailed response chronology that lays out all the events, so in order to respect those rules of the House, I will take the question as notice.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
QUESTION 43-17(5):
MINISTERIAL TRAVEL AND BENEFITS REPORT
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions will be directed to the Premier, Bob McLeod. I have a question regarding some of the tabled documents that have not been tabled. What I’ll do is rather than asking two separate questions, I will put them together, because basically it’s the same issue, they haven’t been tabled.
The first question I’d like to point out is the fact that the ministerial travel reports have only been updated as of January to March 2013, and they were tabled in the House. Of course, they haven’t been tabled for three consecutive sessions after that and there’s supposed to be a three month tabling.
Furthermore, asking the questions all at once here, the report respecting benefits paid to Ministers under the Ministerial Benefits Policy has not been tabled in this House since March 31, 2011, and that, of course, officially was tabled in May 2011. In other words, there hasn’t been the tabling of these two particular reports, and in large part they are not fully being accounted for. I would ask the Premier, when can we expect the tabling of these reports in this House to show accountability on our issues with our Cabinet?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The ministerial travel, I did not realize there was a three-month requirement to table them, but if the Member indicates it is three months then I’m sure that’s correct. I will just find out where it’s at in the process. I don’t expect there is any reason for the delay, and I’m sure we’ll make sure it’s posted as soon as possible after the three months.
The ministerial benefits, that responsibility has been taken over by the Board of Management, so I will have to check with the board to see why that hasn’t been filed yet if there’s a requirement for it to be filed.
I appreciate the quick response from the Premier and his willingness to address this. I would certainly hope that I’d get a response back and that he’d have this tabled within we’ll say 10 days. That seems reasonable, because I’ve had people inquire about this at my office.
My last question would be is that under the report respecting benefits paid to Ministers under the Ministerial Benefits Policy, reviewing old tablings, which goes up to March 31, 2011, not all information is there. For some reason there’s information highlighted out, and what I may point out are things like hospitality where Ministers, I believe, are paid $1,000 cash in order to, well, whatever hospitality equals.
I would ask the Premier to ensure that all things are fully accounted for in the tabling, and even if it is a Board of Management issue, I would ask him to show the leadership on this particular issue and table it anyway to demonstrate the transparency and accountability we all strive for.
I think it’s on the public record how much hospitality is provided to the Members and there is no requirement for accountability in that regard. I will take your request and I will discuss it with the Board of Management.
