This is page numbers 661 - 692 of the Hansard for the 13th Assembly, 7th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was yellowknife.

Topics

Members Present

Honourable Jim Antoine, Honourable Charles Dent, Mr. Erasmus, Honourable Sam Gargan, Mrs. Groenewegen, Mr. Henry, Honourable Stephen Kakfwi, Mr. Krutko, Honourable Michael Miltenberger, Mr. Morin, Mr. Ootes, Mr. Rabesca, Honourable Floyd Roland, Honourable Vince Steen.

Oh, God, may your spirit and guidance be in us as we work for the benefit of all our people, for peace and justice in our land and for the constant recognition of the dignity and aspirations of those whom we serve. Amen.

Item 1: Prayer
Item 1: Prayer

Page 661

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Good afternoon. Orders of the day, item 2, Ministers' statements, Mr. Steen.

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs is reviewing the way it funds community governments to run basic municipal programs and services. This review has been undertaken in partnership with the NWT Association of Municipalities and has involved elected community councillors and senior staff of a number of communities.

I have shared with Members some of the discussion papers that have been developed as part of the municipal finance review. These documents contain a number of proposals for changes to the way the department funds communities and we are anxious to receive comments on these proposals.

Plans are now being made for visits to communities to discuss these proposals. During August and September consultations will be held with community governments in every community in the Northwest Territories. As I have indicated, schedules for these visits are being arranged at this time.

In keeping with the partnership for reviewing the financing of community governments, MACA has established a number of regional consultation teams. Each regional consultation team will include a member of the NWT Association of Municipalities Board of Directors from that region and a senior administrative officer of one of the communities in the region, as well as senior MACA staff. MACA's regional superintendents are leading these consultation groups and they are contacting communities now to set up meetings with councils and their staff.

Mr. Speaker, consultations are a key part of the process in bringing change to the way we fund community governments. The steering committee for the municipal finance review will make its final recommendations to me as the Minister responsible, based on the input received from the consultation meetings held with communities.

I am informing Members of these plans for consultations, so they may participate in the meetings, which are scheduled in their communities. I look forward to sharing with you the times for these meetings when they are set.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Thank you. Ministers' statement. Mr. Kakfwi.

Stephen Kakfwi

Stephen Kakfwi Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I updated Members on the increased oil and gas development activity in the Northwest Territories, and the government's intention to ensure northerners benefit from it. Today, I am pleased to advise Members that I will be signing two documents which will set the groundwork for gas development in the Northwest Territories.

First, I will sign a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Alberta. This agreement will commit our two governments to work together to realize the development of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. I am pleased to welcome the Honourable Mike Cardinal, Alberta Associate Minister of Forestry, to Yellowknife for the signing of this agreement. Mr. Cardinal is signing on behalf of the Honourable Steven West, Alberta Minister of Resource Development. It is our intention that the two governments act in concert for the benefit of all producers in the basin and for the benefit of all residents of Alberta and the Northwest Territories.

I will also be signing, with Mr. Rob Reid of TransCanada Pipelines, a memorandum of understanding committing both parties to work together as industry and government to realize the development of the gas reserves of the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, these two agreements will help set the tone for the present and future economies of the Northwest Territories. The signing of these agreements will take place today during the break in the Legislative Assembly's media room. Mr. Speaker, I take this opportunity to invite all Members of this House to attend. Thank you.

--Applause

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Thank you. Ministers' statements. Mr. Miltenberger.

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, most NWT residents are aware of how challenging it can be for northern students to attend post-secondary education. Historically, students had to leave the NWT to pursue degrees, diplomas and trades courses. In recent years, we have developed more opportunities through Aurora College for students to either take their complete program in the NWT or to take the first year or two of a degree program. However, even with Aurora College's expanding role, most post-secondary students still leave home, moving within the NWT or to the south to pursue their choice of courses.

The Department of Education, Culture and Employment is trying to make that move easier. Through the Student Financial Assistance Program, Northerners are eligible for one of the most generous grant and loan systems in the country. The cost of attending college and university continues to climb at most campuses so we are looking at options for increasing the level of support available to each student. The department is working on the details and hopes that changes can be made for the 2000 school year. This in addition to the millennium scholarships which I announced earlier this week.

The department is also making a number of changes to improve service to students and streamline the SFA system. These changes include:

- establishing a website to provide the details on SFA that students need along with a chat page so students can contact each other;

- improving access to SFA officers for students;

- simplifying and clarifying the application form so students have a better understanding of what they will receive;

- implementing an improved computer system which will allow better record keeping and timely access to student information;

- increased information to students about the funding, including timing of cheques and what is included in each cheque; and,

- providing options for students who prefer to have a slight delay in their January payment in order to receive funds in the new tax year.

Mr. Speaker, early this summer, a group of post-secondary students gathered together to talk about their experiences with the SFA Program. They shared their issues and ideas with the department and we are trying to address their concerns. While we may not be able to address everything immediately, this type of constructive feedback from students on the program is very helpful in improving our services. I would like to thank the organizers of this group for their efforts to make the system better for all students.

Some of the concerns raised by the students were a lack of information about SFA and having no effective way for students to connect with other NWT residents at the same college or university. In an attempt to address some of those difficulties, the department is sponsoring a series of pilot events for post-secondary students over the next three weeks. In cooperation with local MLAs and community representatives, the department will be holding SFA information barbecues in Yellowknife, Inuvik, Hay River, Fort Smith and Fort Simpson.

At each of these events, department staff will be on hand to answer specific questions about the Student Financial Assistance Program. This will include information about the millennium scholarships. We are also inviting students who are entering their final year to share their career interests and resumes with career development officers who will be available as a first step towards finding employment in the NWT after graduation. As well, there will be opportunities for students to connect with other students who are also attending the same college or university. This is particularly helpful for first year students who may have questions that only a seasoned student can help answer.

We hope many NWT students will take advantage of this chance to get ready for school and get the additional information they might need. In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would like to wish each of our NWT post-secondary students good luck with the coming year's studies. Leaving your home, families and friends is not easy but the end result in terms of career choices will make it all worthwhile. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

--Applause

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Thank you. Ministers' statements, Mr. Steen.

Vince Steen

Vince Steen Nunakput

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to speak about the 1999 Western Canada Summer Games which were recently held in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Our team included 131 NWT residents from 18 communities. They joined almost 2000 other competitors from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon.

Mr. Speaker, there are many special stories about Team NWT that I would like to share with you. First, I would like to congratulate all the team members for their performance. Our athletes were excellent ambassadors of our northern spirit.

Team NWT took home three medals. Jonathan Kurszewski of Fort Smith won a gold medal in the javelin by throwing his personal best distance.

--Applause

In wrestling, Peter Houweling and Aziz Ahmed, both of Yellowknife, won silver and bronze medals.

--Applause

Mr. Speaker, there are two other stories about Team NWT that I would like to share. Our first ever wheelchair athlete, Vital Manuel from Fort Good Hope, competed in tennis. He represents a movement to include persons with disabilities in mainstream sports. Dawn Tremblay, of Yellowknife, competed in wrestling. She represents the successful promotion of female athletes in non-traditional sports.

--Applause

Mr. Speaker, I again would like to congratulate all members of Team NWT for their fine performance. I am sure that the Members would join me in saying that we are proud of them and wish them the very best as they progress in their chosen sports. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

--Applause

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Thank you. Ministers' statements. Mr. Kakfwi.

Stephen Kakfwi

Stephen Kakfwi Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am proud to announce that the Department of Justice has created a bursary program for qualified NWT aboriginal law students. It is called the Department of Justice Career Development Program and will be available to resident aboriginal students who have been accepted or conditionally accepted in a Bachelor of Laws program at a recognized Canadian University Faculty of Law. The program will offer $10,000 bursaries for a maximum of four law students. These law students will also have the benefit of a summer job with the Department of Justice, and mentoring from department lawyers throughout the summer and school year. The department will assist each bursary student in an effort to get an articling position. At least one student each year will have the opportunity to article in the department's legal division. If more than one bursary recipient graduates in the same year, the students will be provided the opportunity to compete for the articling position.

The Deputy Minister of Justice will appoint a selection committee to screen and select the successful students. The committee will include department officials from legal division, legislation division, personnel services and the directorate.

These $10,000 bursaries will be awarded each year and must be used in the year awarded. A student wishing to obtain a bursary for a second or third year will have to reapply before the start of the next school year and must have successfully completed each year of study and had a satisfactory performance appraisal. The committee will develop criteria which it will use to evaluate applications for the bursary, but priority will be given to students who wish to practice law with the Government of the Northwest Territories.

This program demonstrates our commitment to encourage aboriginal students to pursue careers as lawyers in the Northwest Territories and to one day assume professional and senior management positions within the Department of Justice. Anyone wanting to learn more about this opportunity or to submit an application for the 1999-2000 school year can contact the manager of personnel services at the Department of Justice. Thank you.

--Applause

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Thank you. Ministers' statements. Item 3, members' statements. Mr. Krutko.

David Krutko

David Krutko Mackenzie Delta

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my statement today falls in line with the questions that have been raised in this House about an increase in developing a brand new correction facility here in Yellowknife at a cost of over $30 million. Mr. Speaker, I find it awfully offensive at this time, after going through the cuts we made in this House in regard to having to cut alcohol and drug programs, closure of the Tl'oondih Healing Centre in my riding, Delta House in Inuvik, cuts to alcohol and drug specialists in our different communities, and also cuts to the youth initiatives that we have taken in this House. In regard to where we are going with this idea, it floors me. We talk about developing our youth, developing our communities, community justice, community wellness. We talk about community empowerment, taking care of problems in the communities at home in the communities. But here we are again, developing a major institutional structure to institutionalize the people of the Northwest Territories in bigger jail facilities, bigger young offender facilities.

Basically the people in the North have been institutionalized since they were born. Either through the hostel systems or the school systems, they were taken away from the communities. We had to go away to go to school. We are doing the same thing again with the youth of this territory by putting them in a facility, a joint facility at that, with criminals who are adults. That I question on the basis, is it constitutionally right for this government to be taking such an action knowing that there is the possibility of legal parameters that we may have to follow to realize that these individuals, these youth, have to be protected against other criminals? This government decides to go ahead and put two institutions into one, have the youth on the one side of the building and have the basically hard-core criminals on the other side. I just cannot get at where this government is coming from when they tell us, we are trying to help the communities take on more responsibilities and take on more control of what happens in your communities. You deal with your problems in your communities. We give you the resources. But what do we do? We take the resources away from the communities. We build more correction facilities and institutions, and then that is the answer for the people in our communities. Is it this government's way of running the government by taking everything away from the communities? Thank you.

--Applause

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Thank you. Members' statements. Mr. Ootes.

Jake Ootes

Jake Ootes Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On another subject, I along with the Minister of Education, Mr. Miltenberger, and the other Yellowknife MLAs, attended a meeting with Yellowknife

adult educators. This group included representatives from eight organizations, such as Aurora College, the Yellowknife Association for Community Living, Tree of Peace, and the FOCUS Program of the YWCA to name just a couple of them. Many concerns were raised including the lack of federal and territorial government funding for education and training programs for income support recipients, policy changes within the federal Ministry of Human Resources Development Canada, which now provides no training support for individuals who face employment barriers, and inconsistent and non-standardized program delivery in communities.

Overall, this translates into significantly reduced training and support services for individuals with limited literacy skills. It also points to a lack of overall vision and comprehensive approach to adult education here in the territories. The Minister recently was able, and I commend him for this, to fund community literacy projects through the Yellowknife Association for Community Living, the YWCA, and the Neshda Child Care Centre. But funding commitments like that are badly needed, and we also need to address some fundamental issues. The adult educators have asked the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment to evaluate the department's strategic approach to adult education, to review and implement core funding to appropriately support its vision on adult education, to make multi-year funding available for adult education programs and services, and to work collaboratively with community-based organizations which have experience in adult education service delivery.

Mr. Speaker, investment in adult education and literacy upgrading will pay off many times down the road, with savings in such areas as justice and income support. We need to work and continue to refine a vision and a plan for a comprehensive approach to adult education here in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

--Applause

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Thank you. Members' statements. Mr. Erasmus.

Roy Erasmus Yellowknife North

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to speak today about students as well, so I was very pleased to hear the two Ministers making some good news statements about bursaries and support for students. Mr. Speaker, I just finished a meeting with a couple of very, very frustrated students. They had a complete list of problems that they with other students have identified. This includes inadequate funding, late arrival of funding, issues concerning approval for funding, funding being revoked without notification and/or explanation, no funding for third semesters and the summer sessions, no explanation for funds given or confirmation of deposits. The spirit of the transition allowance is inconsistent, in fact with funds for 1999 arriving in 1998. There is no funding for books, lack of funding for graduate studies, and accountability issues. There are clerical errors. There is no way to change a student officer if you are having a problem. There is lack of flexibility with travel. You are locked right into whatever you get. There is no emergency loans process, no money management support. There are poor appeal mechanisms. When they are phoning in, they are getting voice mail. There is insufficient contact information. Student officers are going on vacation in August and, worse, in September.

There is a whole list of things here, Mr. Speaker, so I was very pleased to hear the Minister indicate that they are going to be making a number of changes to improve service to students and streamline the student financial assistance. I would like to congratulate him on making these changes, but, Mr. Speaker, where is the major change that is needed to address the student financial assistance, the insufficient amount of funding that our students are getting? Right now they are getting about half of what is required for tuition. Student allowances are low, the whole works. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

The Member for Yellowknife North is seeking unanimous consent to conclude his statement. Do we have any nays? There are no nays. Mr. Erasmus, you have unanimous consent.

Roy Erasmus Yellowknife North

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I was saying, the biggest problem is the insufficient amount of student financial assistance. This government has been sitting on a plan for two years now that was going to be put forward and passed so that students could get funding this year. Where is it? The other thing is that students need some type of association, a students' union, and this government should help them to achieve that, in fact provide some funding so that there is consistency. We know that students come and go as soon as they have their degrees. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank everybody for allowing me to conclude my statement, and I will be having some questions for the Minister of Education later. Thank you.

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Thank you. Members' statements. Mr. Morin.

Don Morin Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I talk about the Yellowknife Correctional Centre once again. It is with a heavy heart that I heard about this decision, Mr. Speaker, by the Minister of Justice. Ultimately it was the Minister of Justice that sent this proposal forward to Cabinet and his Cabinet colleagues. They in their wisdom decided to build a new facility in Yellowknife, not to renovate an old facility but to build a new facility in Yellowknife. It is also public knowledge that the majority of the dollars are going into Yellowknife at this time. Everything announced recently coming out of this government has been Yellowknife, Yellowknife, Yellowknife. Yellowknife's economy is bad, so they have to shore it up with a housing program. Yellowknife's gold mines are being threatened, so we have to help them out. Yellowknife's diamond polishing needs help, so we help that out. Now we take the government money and we spend it in our great city of Yellowknife again. I wonder whatever happened to places like Inuvik, Hay River, Fort Smith, Fort Resolution. Maybe they do not exist anymore. Maybe because they are outside the boundaries of the city of Yellowknife, they are not qualified anymore to put in proposals to this government. This government has shut the door on other regional centres to even bring forward a proposal to build a new correctional centre for the Northwest Territories. They have shut that door. They never even had the door open. The Minister in

his wisdom felt no one else was qualified. It is here. We will keep it here.

They even carried on further, Mr. Speaker. Before the money for that budget was approved in this Legislative Assembly, they put an ad in the Globe and Mail. That was a week ago today, an ad in the Globe and Mail. I tabled that in this House. I checked through all the newspapers in the Northwest Territories. Now they are shutting the door to northern businesses because they have not even put an ad in a northern newspaper. They have given southern businesses a hand-up against northern businesses. Maybe there are no northern businesses qualified. Maybe they have made that decision already. I do not know. But what I do know is that the government of the day and especially the Minister of Justice has forgotten that anything exists outside this Legislative Assembly and Yellowknife. They are a government for Yellowknife, not the people of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

--Applause

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Members' statements. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am going to speak again today about something that I have brought up in this House before, and that is the purchasing policies of this government. Purchasing policies have been developed and implemented by the GNWT to provide incentive for the establishment and sustainability of northern businesses. With the advent of community empowerment, there was a shift to devolving responsibility to communities, band councils, local development corporations, et cetera, for the delivery of programs, services and capital projects. In this shift, my concern is with what happened to government policies such as the Business Incentive Policy and the Manufacturing Directive Policy. Has the enforcement or implementation of these policies been lost in this shuffle?

Northern businesses have made investments on the basis of these policies and now rely on happenstance to learn the projects and who is delivering them. I have said before in this House and I will say it again, every project funded directly and delivered on behalf of this government by various departments, local or regional governments, should be made known through a central information source such as a government Web site. Mr. Henry has spoken about the need to make Nunavut aware of what we have to offer by northern contractors, suppliers, and manufacturers, and I think this is a good idea. But before we run off to Nunavut, I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that we need to make more efforts to make our own western communities, development corporation, government departments, and agencies aware of what we have to offer here in the North. Then we need to make sure that contracts funded by this government adhere to our own purchasing policies in order to realize maximum benefits from our limited government expenditures to northern businesses, and these northern businesses in turn employ northerners.

Hay River has a largely self-reliant manufacturing sector but yet, over and over again, I hear of government contracts going out specifying southern suppliers. Just today, I got another fax from another manufacturer in Hay River where it is not even left open. A southern supplier of a product which is manufactured here in the North is actually specified in a government contract. A call had to be made again to the deputy minister, to the regional people, and now this has been corrected. But the business only heard about this just by circumstance. This is not satisfactory.

We do have a limited number of capital dollars, and if we cannot take and make maximum benefit of these to the benefit of Northerners, well then we are not doing our job. I do not know how we can look further afield when we cannot even take care of making this information known and enforced right here in our own territory. Later on, I will have questions again for the Minister of Public Works and Services regarding this. Thank you.

--Applause

The Speaker Samuel Gargan

Members' statements, Mr. Rabesca.