Mr. Speaker, today I want to talk about proper channels. GNWT employees, including frontline health workers, are often told if you have a concern, you have to go through the proper channel. Don't take it to the political level, don't take it to the media. And that's all well and good until that refrain is used as an excuse not to do anything or not to take responsibility or to make staff who are already overwhelmed chase after yet another manager or fill out yet another form.

Sometimes staff have already gone through every channel available to them, and no solution has been communicated back to them, and the emergency is looming, and they see no relief coming. And sometimes the proper channel doesn't even exist in the first place. And those staff who really care have to fight to create a brandnew channel.

I've spoken to nurses who were around back in 1988 when the Public Service Act was first created. Nurses fought then against being forcibly incorporated into the Union of Northern Workers under one big collective agreement. They took it all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and they lost because the court at that time said if you don't like it, your proper channel is to go lobby your MLAs, get them to change the laws so you get the bargaining agent that you want. Ironically, that's exactly what NWT nurses have been doing recently. And we are being told that actually that's not the proper channel at all, that they need to go through their existing union, go through HR, go through the government.

Mr. Speaker, there are no proper channels to effect this change. We have legislated a monopoly. The law gives all the power to the UNW to speak for public service employees and no power to employees themselves to choose their bargaining agent; no power to important groups such as nurses who will always be a minority within the broader UNW.

Mr. Speaker, if the only proper channel is to convince the group that's currently guaranteed a monopoly to voluntarily give up some of its power, then that is not a proper channel at all. And that's not the UNW's fault. The legislation is the problem. We need to stop scolding our staff for doing things the wrong way and get busy creating new proper channels. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.