Good afternoon. Orders of the day for Tuesday, February 25, 1992. Item 2, Ministers' statements. Mr. Patterson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, an internal review at the Workers' Compensation Board has identified serious irregularities involving possible misappropriation of funds from the board by one of its employees. As a result, the RCMP have been asked to investigate the matter. In addition, an employee of the board has been suspended, with pay, pending the results of an internal investigation.

Mr. Speaker, I am not able to comment any further on this matter while it is under investigation. Thank you.

Ministers' statements. Ministers' statements. Item 3, Members' statements. Members' statements. Mrs. Marie-Jewell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak on an issue of how a Member, particularly a Minister, spoke yesterday in this House. Mr. Speaker, the Member for Iqaluit conducted himself in a manner that I do not believe is acceptable to myself and to Members of this House. Mr. Speaker, I quote from Hansard, the comment said: "If it is skewed to the West, it should be called the western special committee on social..."

The concern that I want to address, Mr. Speaker, is the point that when we have a Minister who is responsible to look after the interests of all NWT residents with an open mind of fairness, and when we have a Minister that we place our trust in to develop policies, regulations and legislation for the future of our Territories, I am concerned that this particular Minister has the mentality of an East/West concept when developing responses to issues.

With these comments, Mr. Speaker, due to the attitude and the conduct he displayed toward Members, if the Minister wants to maintain any credibility in this House I would suggest that he consider apologizing for his inconsiderate comments. Thank you.

Members' statements. Mr. Patterson.

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for my ill-considered comments yesterday.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Patterson. Mr. Gargan.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I was shocked and dismayed yesterday with a response I received from the Minister responsible for the Status of Women Council during question period.

I am sure honourable Members will recall that I asked the honourable Member for Natilikmiot what action he had taken to seek the advice of the Status of Women Council on the shameful decision of our territorial court to grant Paul Quassa an absolute discharge. The Minister did not answer my question. He did not refer to the council or its executive director. His only comment was, "Since the decision has been made, on a number of occasions I have talked about this with my wife."

Mr. Speaker, this response is clearly unacceptable. The people of the Northwest Territories commit over a quarter of a million dollars yearly to support the council. The members of the council, and their staff, invest even more in terms of time, energy and devotion they bring to the cause. For the Minister to seriously suggest that he would not actively seek the opinions of this group of skilled and thoughtful Northerners because he had chosen to talk to his wife instead shows little respect for the members of the council or the work that they do. It also shows disrespect for women in general because it suggests that, unless you are married and have a husband who listens, your views will not be considered by this government. It is possible that the Minister may have been trying to make a joke with his answer. Mr. Speaker, this is not acceptable, either.

Throughout the Northwest Territories women, and men too, have taken note of the Quassa affair and what it says about both the justice system and our current constitutional political process. This is not a joking matter, Mr. Speaker, and the Minister should know that. We should take a serious position on the issue and should begin to rely on the advisory resources that exist within the Status of Women Council and our community organizations across the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Members will join me in welcoming Mr. Gary Bohnet to our Assembly. As we know, Mr. Bohnet is the president of the Metis Nation. Members' statements. Mr. Antoine.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, allegations about the 1990/1991 delivery of HAP houses for

three Nahendeh communities by the Liidli Koe Construction Association have caused discouragement and resentment within my constituency. I believe that the actions and statements of a disgruntled former Housing Corporation employee, and the highly selective and poorly researched coverage which aired on CBC's Focus North -- I call it the "Unfocused North" -- program, have directed a lot of negative attention on the Fort Simpson Dene band and the Liidli Koe Construction Association, and upon good people who have given their time and energy to assist their community.

I had originally decided not to dignify these inaccuracies and falsehoods with a response, but I would like to set the record straight. Mr. Speaker, the Dene band to which I belong has been involved in providing houses for the people of Fort Simpson for over 15 years. Our partnership with the public government -- first the federal government and later the government of the Northwest Territories -- has been in part based on what I believe are our rights and responsibilities set out in a treaty, Treaty No. 11, which was signed by our forefathers in 1921. Mr. Speaker, we made a decision to proceed with block funding arrangements several years ago because we believed the greater autonomy they represented were in keeping with the partnership and with our tradition of community self-sufficiency. When I became chief of the Fort Simpson Dene Band in July 1990, however, I inherited a number of problems within the housing infrastructure of our community. The Liidli Koe Construction Association, which is managed by the housing committee of the Fort Simpson Band Council, was struggling with a surplus of capital assets and a very severe cash shortage. Late block funding payments, received in July from the territorial Housing Corporation, had disrupted project schedules which were supposed to begin as soon as the snow melted in the spring. There were problems with some local contractors' attitudes toward meeting our project deadlines when they knew they were dealing with public funding.

Interpersonal strife and suspicion within the bureaucracy of the Housing Corporation was interfering with our ability to get answers and commitments we needed to do a good job. I think my time is coming to an end, Mr. Speaker.

It has come to an end, Mr. Antoine. The honourable Member is seeking unanimous consent to conclude his statement. Are there any nays? There are no nays. Continue, Mr. Antoine.

Mahsi Cho. Because of the success the association had achieved over the past years, we faced the unique situation of having two other communities, Wrigley and Jean Marie River, ask Fort Simpson to take responsibility for the delivery of their HAP units there, as well. As a chief, the most useful contribution I could make was to have the best people in my community work on the band council's housing committee. We were fortunate that band councillors Andy Norwegian, Rita Cli and Ron Hardisty accepted the challenge of being on the housing committee. And I was fortunate to recruit Rene Lamothe to work for the housing committee as a project manager. In my role as chief, I asked this group to keep a tight financial rein on the matters and to use a common sense approach to meeting people's basic needs for housing.

Mr. Speaker, the housing committee made a lot of difficult decisions. I supported their decisions then, and I do now. I would like to commend these people for their contribution and to indicate to this House that it is truly regrettable to see the sort of misinformation and finger-pointing that has surrounded this issue.

But what matters, Mr. Speaker, is the bottom line; and the bottom line here is that Liidli Koe Construction succeeded in meeting its goal for 1990-91. It built and delivered 11 houses for families in three Nahendeh communities -- seven in Fort Simpson, three in Wrigley and one in Jean Marie River -- and people were able to move into their homes. And it delivered these homes at a lower average per unit cost than the previous year.

There has been some talk locally of a formal investigation into this matter. Personally, I would welcome any sort of investigation. We have nothing to hide, but it would not accomplish anything. I agree with the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation, Hon. Don Morin, when he says that our job now is to build houses.

Mr. Speaker, as a final comment, I would like to register my concern over the fact that internal Housing Corporation documents were turned over to the media, and that this government has appeared helpless to do anything about this abuse of confidence. I will have more to say about that issue in my statements later this session. Mahsi cho.

Members' statements. Mr. Pudlat.

(Translation) Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would just like to tell my fellow colleagues that in the Baffin I am surprised to see that there is a female mayor in our community, and I am very happy to see that. There was an election to elect a mayor, and I am proud to say that the female who was running for mayor was elected. You can see that women are becoming leaders, and I would just like to say that I am very happy to see a female in our community who is a mayor. I am welcoming the new mayor of Lake Harbour, and I will be working with her. Thank you.

Thank you. Members' statements. Mr. Lewis.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like Mr. Gargan and Mrs. Marie-Jewell, I am also concerned about the way in which questions were answered yesterday. I am particularly concerned about the response made by our respected Government Leader on the involvement of ordinary Members in the implementation group for the Beatty report.

I will not quote, but I looked carefully through the unedited transcript of Hansard and listened carefully to her responses yesterday, but the implication is that the work that has gone to date is of such a highly technical nature that poor peons like us could not be involved because it was so technical and so complicated that we would not be able to get our minds around it. That is the implication from the statements that she made yesterday.

I would like to point out, Mr. Speaker...

Point of order.

Ms. Cournoyea.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is imputing motives to my answers to questions.

Is this a point of order, Ms. Cournoyea?

Point Of Order

Mr. Speaker, the honourable Member is imputing motives to my statements. I have total

respect for every Member in this Legislative Assembly. The technical nature that I referred to is that we are talking about the make-up and the process of setting up the implementation. Thank you.

On your point of order, Ms. Cournoyea, I will review Hansard and give a ruling on the point of order as soon as possible. I would just ask Members to be cautious when they are making Members' statements, as to the interpretation of their Members' statements, just to keep respect here in the Assembly. Mr. Lewis.

I will go on to describe then, my feelings about the response to questions that were asked yesterday. We had understood, as ordinary Members, that having received the Beatty report, we would be involved at that stage in doing something to implement whatever kinds of changes in programs needed to be implemented in order to achieve overall efficiency and to bring government closer to the people we serve. It was quite clear from the statement that was made yesterday that it was thought that the kind of work that needed to be done was of a highly technical nature.

The point I want to make, Mr. Speaker, is that we want to be involved at the level when decisions have to be made. We are not talking about technical stuff; we are talking about policy, programs, changes, and we do not want to be involved at the end when all the decisions have been made and they are at the stage where they are so irreversible that we then would be at the stage of trying to do the work that civil servants are employed to do, which is to implement things and go around and make sure that things are working properly. What we want is to be involved at the decision-making level about what we are going to do, not how it is going to be done. Thank you.

---Applause