Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to acknowledge the mover and the seconder as well as Government Operations for their hard work on this motion and the work on the ombudsman implementation. I know I’ve been able to attend several of the meetings.
In my short term as MLA, I’ve seen many situations where an ombudsman would be convenient and useful. There are several opportunities where MLAs can fight the fight to a certain point until they hit a roadblock, whether that’s in the Minister’s office or whether it’s in bureaucracy or whether it’s in the legislation. An ombudsman would be able to take care of some of those issues. I think we’re talking about the small percentage of issues that have been before MLAs and the government. I know the government’s probably reluctant to accept this ombudsman, seeing as they would indicate that we take care of the issues that are before us, and that’s true. They do, on the majority. But there is that 1, 2, 3 percent that they cannot fix. There is no immediate solution and maybe they agree to disagree with one of our constituents.
The other argument that lots of people have a concern with is the cost. Granted, there will be a cost to this office, but we know that we would implement it with a statutory office to do economies of scale for implementation to maybe do some joint work, office and staff-wise and similar work-wise.
There are many constituents that have issues with the way government is doing certain items, but they can’t risk that, whether they are a contractor who continues to do work with the department on a daily basis, they can’t risk their livelihoods to make a complaint. An ombudsman may be able to take that complaint anonymously, so that individual or that company can make a complaint that they haven’t dealt with or this situation hasn’t been dealt with.
As the mover and seconder indicated, this issue and this discussion have been here for more than 20 years. We need to look at an ombudsman office sooner than later. We’re at the last year of this Assembly and we’re going to go through another Assembly that didn’t implement this important office, this important feature in GNWT to take constituents’ concerns and complaints that are not being dealt with, that are taking too long to be dealt with.
Like I said, in my short three-year career here, we have had issues where people have been working on complaints and concerns for over three, four, five years, and I’ve taken them on from previous MLAs. There are certain things in this government that have to be dealt with promptly, and we believe that an ombudsman will allow this to happen and should be implemented. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.