This is page numbers 4511 – 4544 of the Hansard for the 17th Assembly, 5th 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 work.

Topics

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a commitment to the House, the department did a retrospective analysis of the bridge and also accepted all of the recommendations of the Auditor General. The specific work that was done in detail, the contract that the Member speaks of, I don’t have that detail here with me and I am not able to speak on that at this time. Thank you.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Mr. Speaker, the former Minister proclaimed quite adamantly and passionately about how much money they were saving, but it seems like we may be just redoing all that work that that southern contractor lowballed the bid so that they can get the job. Now I want to know, is this

electrical work that they did last year under the conditions that we thought we were being led down the garden path that they would be obliged to meet and would meet and promised to meet haven’t been met.

Can the Minister explain, has the electrical work fully been signed off as lawful and safe for Northerners and fulfilled their contract in the eyes of the Department of Transportation?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated, I don’t have the details of the contract that the Member speaks of. It would be difficult for me to determine or indicate whether or not all the work has been signed off as good work by the department. My understanding is that these individuals that were doing the work are professionals. I know that the staff that are inspecting the work are professionals. My assumption is that if the staff is signing off on work on the Deh Cho Bridge, then the work is done to proper standard. Thank you.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Mr. Speaker, I would like to know what the Department of Transportation is going to do when it comes to finding out do we have any holdbacks on this particular work at this time and what are we going to do when we need to address these in the future. Quite frankly, a northern company that has investments here, that has employees hired here that wanted to do this particular work lost the job because the southern business lowballed them and it seems like we are going back to fix the work that they lowballed a northern company.

Are we at a financial risk or a legal risk in this situation because we accepted a low tender but we allowed a change order to sneak well beyond the original expectations?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Mr. Speaker, I don’t have the details of that specific contract. I don’t have the details of the change order to that contract, but there are regulations in place, there are holdbacks on all contracts to accommodate any potential issues on the contracts, so those are our standard. They are laid out in the contract. Depending on what the price of the overall contract was, then the holdback would be there. The appropriate amount would be held back to ensure that the work is completed to a standard that’s acceptable. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think we need to boil it down to who is responsible for this mismanagement of this electrical contract. Frankly, it seems as if they were all too excited to save all this money, but it turns out that it has turned into an interesting boondoggle all over because oh, my goodness, we are going to save

money from a southern company, but it turns out if we have to redo the work, it’s going to cost us more. I, quite frankly, think we are in a situation of liability here that we may rightfully, if not morally, owe money or some type of responsible action towards the original northern company that bid on the work, could have done the work or we wouldn’t be talking about it today. I would like to hear what type of accountability this Minister is going to hold somebody to account. Thank you.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Mr. Speaker, the department doesn’t mismanage projects. I don’t believe that this is one that was mismanaged. I will check into the allegations made here by the Member. I’m sure that everything is done according to the regulations, according to the standards. There are certainly a lot of regulations surrounding any sort of electrical work. We will ensure that is done within that. I don’t believe there is mismanagement.

I can advise the Members if there are any issues out there, but I don’t believe there are. It’s difficult for me to respond to a question when the Member is assuming that things are mismanaged. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Wendy Bisaro

Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to take this opportunity to try and get some clarification from the Minister of Health and Social Services with regards to some answers he gave to MLA Blake two days ago in regards to the Medical Travel Policy and escorts. In his answer to Mr. Blake, the Minister stated that there was going to be an RFP put out to deal with an escort policy. I believe that’s what I heard. Hansard doesn’t really clarify it for me. From Hansard, the Minister stated, “I’m hoping to have that Cabinet policy to Cabinet and then to Standing Committee on Social Programs in July.” That’s a little confusing to me, plus the reference to the RFP. So I would like to ask the Minister if he could please elaborate a bit and clarify it for me. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Abernethy.

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I apologize for the confusion. Several months ago, I briefed committee and provided them with some information on the review of the Medical Travel Policy. We had hoped to actually have what would be the base policy, the Cabinet policy ready for some discussion in March. Unfortunately, I had an opportunity to be briefed on that and I didn’t feel it was consistent with the types of questions and

concerns the Members had been raising, so I asked the department to do a little bit of work. As a result, we are delayed on that. I hope to have that base Cabinet policy around medical travel done in July so that I can share it with Cabinet and Regular Members.

As part of the medical travel review, we were going to work on the base Cabinet policy but then we were also to do some work on some specific aspects of it, things such as escorts, non-medical escorts as well as fees as well as an appeal process. That was going to occur based on the timeline that I provided after we had done the base policy.

Frankly, given the delay that is now in place, I don’t want to wait to do the work on the escort portion because clearly we are hearing from people that that needs to be done. I have directed the department to prepare and go out with an RFP to seek somebody who can actually help us through that process to facilitate meeting with stakeholders, bring individuals who have some input that they want to provide onto this, build upon all the statistical work that we pulled together and all the research that we’ve done to do that public consultation process to make recommendations on how to move forward with this escort portion.

We’ve heard a lot of opinion; we’ve heard a lot of ideas; we’ve heard a lot of solutions. Some of the solutions contradict each other. I’ve had one community say we want to do this and other communities say please don’t do that. There is a lot of information there. We are seeking a consultant to help us go through that process and give us some concrete recommendations on the escort portion. That is what the RFP is for.

I apologize for any confusion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Wendy Bisaro

Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake

Thanks to the Minister for the explanation. Generally, policy is developed internally. Why is it that we need to go to an RFP and hire a contractor to develop this part of the policy? Thank you.

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

Mr. Speaker, we have a certain number of staff in the department who are doing a large amount of work, and more and more priorities are coming at them on a regular basis. We have seen clearly that we are capped with resources, and I want this work to be done and I want it to be done as quickly as possible, but we often go out and seek additional resources to help with the reviews and analysis and there are people who can help us do this in a timely manner, so this isn’t unusual, but given the timelines, we want to make sure that we get this done. I feel it’s important to expedite the section around escorts. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Wendy Bisaro

Wendy Bisaro Frame Lake

I totally agree. This policy has been revised for a very long period of time, so I’m glad that we are moving forward on the whole policy but specifically on this one section.

I’m still a bit confused when the Minister references a Cabinet policy. I’m not sure if that is a policy that stays just within Cabinet. When policies are developed, they are generally made public. So when he talks about a Cabinet policy, is this a policy that will be public afterwards and he is simply calling it a Cabinet policy because it’s not approved? I’m a little confused there. Thanks.

Glen Abernethy

Glen Abernethy Great Slave

What I’m referring to is the overarching policy with respect to medical travel and how it operates and functions. It will be available to the authorities, it will be available to all individuals. We will make sure that people understand the Medical Travel Policy. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m probably the umpteenth person who has stood up in this House to talk about Junior Kindergarten, but I have to weigh in on this topic. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Right from the start, who can argue with early childhood development and expanding that within our government? Where the problem lies is how this department tried to take, yet again, a cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all approach to early childhood development in the communities without taking into consideration what impacts that would have and what ripple effect that would have. In a community like Hay River where we have play school, Growing Together, Tree House, Aboriginal Head Start where age four children attend all of these programs, sure, parents are going to put their kids into an optional Junior Kindergarten Program, but we have added this. We’ve asked our educational councils to do more with less. So I don’t think you could find a parent who wouldn’t agree with the principle, but if you ask the same parents if they want to have the whole school system diluted by adding another grade, essentially, into our schools without any funding to go with it, I’m sure you would get some mixed responses.

So I would like to ask the Minister – and maybe he’s been asked this before, but let me ask again – did you consider, in the small communities where the need was the most dire where you didn’t already have long established ECE programming, did you approach the federal government and think about things like Aboriginal Head Start? Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Jackson Lafferty

Jackson Lafferty Monfwi

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This particular programming, Junior Kindergarten is part of it. Head Start program is another one. We have eight Head Start programs across the territory through federal funding. Obviously, yes, we have approached the federal government on numerous programs such as Head Start and other early childhood delivery into the communities. We’ve been told over and over, it’s your own jurisdictional deliverance. We have to work with that, but every opportunity, yes, we have met with the federal government not only on the education part but other labour market development agreements and other sources of funding that could be potentially available to us, so we have embarked on that and we will continue to do so.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Did the department consider that rolling out Junior Kindergarten in all communities without any consideration for what was already there in the area of early childhood development, did the department consider how that was going to affect those existing programs that had been on the ground for a very long time? When you take all of the four-year-olds out of all the ones I just named, what is the result for those and the daycares? Are we basically gutting all that stuff that we’ve already established in favour of Junior Kindergarten? Thank you.

Jackson Lafferty

Jackson Lafferty Monfwi

Yes. The answer would be yes. We have considered all those mitigations and working with the early childhood deliverers in the communities, the child care workers, as well, and the program deliverers. We thought about all the implications, as well, but at the same time, creating more opportunities where if we draw out the four-year-olds, they have more opportunity to focus on zero to three years of age. How can we assist in those areas?

At the same time, the Head Start program, some of those have been in place for a number of years. This is an option for enhancing. Working with the Head Start program, it’s an optional program for them, for the parents. So we’ve reached out to the workers, reached out to program developers and provide them as much support as we possibly can and provide options as well. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Jane Groenewegen

Jane Groenewegen Hay River South

Did the department consider that in the small communities where there was nothing established formally for early childhood development, that perhaps a made-in-the-North, not in association with the school, kind of approach could have been better where we could have involved parents and families and incorporated some other kind of parenting support and training and life skills and different things? I am not trying to be mean to the smaller communities, but obviously

there is a higher unemployment rate in those communities and it might have been an opportunity to get parents and children, if not a program, fashioned particularly for those communities in consultation with those communities rather than trying to add a grade into schools. Was that considered? Thank you.

Jackson Lafferty

Jackson Lafferty Monfwi

I agree that that is part of the process with early childhood development, the overall framework. When we talk about early childhood development, it is a mega piece of work across the Northwest Territories. Junior Kindergarten is just one piece of it. We have all these different initiatives on the go. Recommendations are brought to our attention as part of the action plan. Now we’re currently working on those on what we can do immediately, the short-term/long-term plans.

So, yes, we’ve considered all those areas. It came from the parents, grandparents and educators. Based on that, we are rolling out those specific programs. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.