Joe Handley

Legislative Assembly photo

Roles

In the Legislative Assembly

Elsewhere

Historical Information Joe Handley is no longer a member of the Legislative Assembly.

Last in the Legislative Assembly September 2007, as MLA for Weledeh

Won his last election, in 2003, by acclaimation.

Statements in the House

Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters February 25th, 2000

Mr. Chairman, a basic condition of the program was that it had to be the individual's primary residence. There was no question about that at all.

For anyone to follow the policy and guidelines on this program, they would have to live in the house. If the Member knows of a situation where someone has bought a house with assistance from this program and is using it as a rental property, or some other purpose and living somewhere else, we would be very interested in knowing about it.

There is also a minimum time period in which people had to live in the house before they could turn it over. You could not buy it one month and two months later turn it over to someone else, or sell it again and take advantage of the money.

We would be interested if anyone is working around the rules. I suspect there may have been some.

Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters February 25th, 2000

Mr. Chairman, last year, the Housing Corporation had a surplus in operations and maintenance. They, as I understand it, required capital money in order to do an extension of the Minimum Downpayment Assistance Program. They are not allowed to switch their surplus money in operations and maintenance over to capital. The process they go through is to turn the money back to the Government of the Northwest Territories, and the Government of the Northwest Territories gave it back to them as capital. I could confirm that with the former Minister. Thank you.

Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters February 25th, 2000

Yes, Mr. Chairman. As part of our accounting, in recent years we have gone to a system where any time we donate or give an asset to another party, then it is necessary to record the value of that asset as being a grant in kind.

Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters February 25th, 2000

Yes, Mr. Chairman, there is no reason why this should not be built into the business plans.

Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters February 25th, 2000

Mr. Chairman, there is a provision in the Collective Agreement for dealing with disputes with regard to this matter. The government is going through the process of reviewing the job classifications. We have already done the excluded ones and are now working on the unionized positions.

Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters February 25th, 2000

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The government continually does interdepartmental assessments of the potential impact of any increases to particular categories of workers. In this case, any kind of impact that there would have been, I do not believe that there was any, would have been taken into consideration as we did the interdepartmental checks.

Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters February 25th, 2000

Mr. Chairman, the fees are reviewed periodically. I do not believe it is on a schedule, I think it is based more on a situation where we either have to bring our physicians and the fees they charge in line with what is going on in the rest of the country or we face some other sort of circumstance. There were, in the recent past, a couple of reductions in fees that caused our doctors in our situation to be less than attractive compared to the rest of Canada.

Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters February 25th, 2000

I believe there is a mix of salaried and fee-for-service doctors in the Northwest Territories, but I do not know if the Minister of Health can clarify that. I am not exactly clear on it.

Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters February 25th, 2000

Mr. Chairman, this is for increases to the medical fee schedule, so it is for everything the doctors do. In answer to the second part of the question, we have both salaried and fee-for-service doctors.

Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters February 25th, 2000

Mr. Chairman, this is a three percent fee increase that was negotiated between the Department of Health and the physicians in the Northwest Territories. It is not a collective agreement situation, it is one where the department negotiates with the physicians. It covers both salaries, but also other expenses the physicians would incur. This one came in too late for the main estimates, but it is basically $212,000, which is a global three percent increase and another $50,000 that was agreed to for continuing medical education for the physicians.