EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
As the Minister of Sustainable Development, when I attend the federal/territorial meetings I try to inform my provincial and federal counterparts about our economic development plight in Nunavut.
We want to make sure that we develop a comprehensive and feasible economic development strategy to assist the small businesses and potential businesses that might become available to the people in the future. T hat is why we wanted this conference and as a government we cannot implement economic development alone, we have to work with parties who have vested interests in Nunavut.
We have to have agreement with NTI, and the Federal government to work on an economic development strategy so we’ll work along side with them.
Supplementary, Final Supplementary.
When you are on the government side the clock seems very slow, but it’s the other way around when you are the one who is asking the questions.
One thing that we have to discuss further and I know that it’s not the Minister’s responsibility but I think that there has to be further dialogue on the issue.
We have a sparse population up here in Nunavut and people tend to become provincial although they work extremely hard to develop economic opportunities.
Although as Inuit we are told that we own development corporations, like the Qikiqtaaluk Corporation, Sakku Corporation, the Kitikmeot Development Corporation, Nunasi Corporation, our people are told that we own these birthright corporations but, they end up competing against the Co-op and other Inuit private businesses that are established up here.
I know it does not constitute part of the mandate of the Minister, but I think that further dialogue is necessary with the organizations and what the Minister can do, is address it in one of his Minister’s Statements.
In regards to the Sivumut II Economic Development Strategy Conference, it is going to be a forum for discussions amongst the various parties for working together as a territory to create more economic development for our people and communities.
I'm sure that the Sivumut II Conference will be extremely beneficial to our territory and provide clear and solid direction for our foreseeable future.
There will be discussion between the government, private businesses and other entities and to see what we can do to plan for the future and look at other economic development opportunities.
Speaker: We still have Members left that haven’t yet asked questions on the list.
We’ll try to move it along.
Question 451 – 1(6): Dental Services in Baker Lake
I’ll try to make this quick so somebody else can get a question in.
My question today to the Minister, can you tell me who is responsible for not providing dental services of any kind in Baker Lake.
Mr. Speaker, I don’t know who’s responsible for not providing it, but I do know who’s responsible for providing it and that’s me.
Supplementary, Mr. McLean..
Now that I have that straightened out, that his department is responsible for dental services, and can he tell me why there hasn’t been any there lately.
It is my understanding that there is at least 98 days of general dental services provided to the people of Baker Lake each fiscal year and included outside of that, there are also days available for orthodontic services in the community and Mr. Speaker, in the process right now of the advertisement of a dental therapist for the community.
It’s refreshing to know that the Minister is advertising for a dental therapist.
There hasn’t been one there for three years.
I know the wheels of bureaucracy move ever so slow, but to get a job advertised out there and get a dental therapist into the fourth largest community in Nunavut, I would think would be a priority of this government.
Can he tell me if they’re really working at trying to put a dental therapist in Baker Lake?
Yes we are, Mr. Speaker.
I live in Baker Lake. I live there.
I spend roughly 98 days in the capital and you know what my feelings are on that.
But in the last three years, I’ve been trying to get a tooth filled.
For three years I’ve been trying to get a tooth filled in Baker Lake.
And he said that they provide 98 days a year there.
Could he explain to me or give it to me in writing, when the next 98 days there’s going to be a dentist in Baker Lake so I can spread it around my community to inform my constituents that we may in fact have somebody over there to deal with their dental needs.
Can you give that to me in writing for the next year?
Hon. Ed Picco: Yes, we can do that Mr. Speaker.
Question 452 – 1(6): Patient Transportation Vehicle in Iqaluit
Pond Inlet, Igloolik, Hall Beach, Arctic Bay, Grise Fjord, and Resolute Bay residents arrive in the evening and usually they have medical patients.
Our van is just too small and there are usually some medical people who don’t have any transportation to take them anywhere.
Are you going to provide one?
Mr. Speaker, part of the contract that is in place with the elders’ group here in Iqaluit is to provide transportation to medical patients coming from outside of the community to the boarding home and or to the hospital.
Mr. Speaker, I have not been aware of incidents lately where there has been a problem with that, but if there are situations, then, Mr. Speaker, we will look into them.
I’m very glad that the Minister is going to look into this.
Usually in the Inuit custom, even though there is a discomfort or a concern, we usually don’t say anything.
We’re very patient people.
We all know that there are taxis available.
The elders especially don’t know when their appointments are, where the boarding home is or how to get there.
There is going to be a Quttiktuq flight coming in tomorrow with patients again.
Mr. Speaker, as soon as question period is over, we take a break.
Mr. Speaker, I will go into the office to make sure that Transportation at the Hospital is aware of the planes coming in to make sure, as the Members has stated, that the elders, or any other patients that are coming in, that there is transportation available to them because that is part of contract that is in place.
Question 453 – 1(6): Status of Negotiation on Public Service Act
Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister responsible for the Public Service Act.
Mr. Speaker, as we all know that the current Collective Agreement that we have between the Nunavut Employees Union and the Government of Nunavut expires on March 31st, at the end of this month.
Less than a couple of weeks away.
This Agreement covers hundreds of employees in all the communities across Nunavut.
I would just like to ask the Minister responsible as to what the status of the negotiations are between the Nunavut Employees Union and the Government of Nunavut?
Mr. Speaker, I regret to inform the Member that I will have to check with my staff as to where the standings are in the negotiations.
Mr. Speaker, as the Minister responsible for the Public Service Act, I would like to ask who is going to be given specific directions to the Government of Nunavut’s negotiating team.
Is it going to be the Minister responsible for the Public Service Act?
The Act indicates that the Collective Agreement is an agreement in writing between the Minister and the Employees Association.
The definition of a Minister is that is the Minister responsible for that Act?
Can I ask the Minister if in fact what will be happening?
We have reviewed this matter at the Cabinet and also it might be other jurisdictions. (interpretation) I completely lost it in English.
What we are doing is currently doing a review to see what the other jurisdictions are like.
And we appointed the Minister of Finance to be the lead negotiator.
Can the Minister indicate what they appointed the Minister of Finance to Chair a meeting of looking at what the other jurisdictions are going to be doing, or chairing the negotiating team between the NEU and the Government of Nunavut?
I probably would. I was looking for it earlier too in looking at the other jurisdictions to be consistent with some of the arrangements.
We have the Chairman of the Financial Management Board that is leading the negotiation for the NEU and Government of Nunavut.
Mr. Speaker, as I had indicated and I will read it directly from the Public Service Act, under Collective Agreement, on Section 41, a definition to the Collective Agreement means an agreement in writing entered into under this section between the Minister and the Employees Association.
In the definitions also Mr. Speaker, the Minister means the Minister responsible for this act and that’s the Minister of Human Resources so if the Minister of Human Resources is the one that is supposed to be entering into these agreements with the Nunavut Employees Union.
Why then is that responsibility being handed off to the Minister of Finance?
The Cabinet Members and the FMB have done this to be cost effective.
What we did was to get the Minister to be the lead negotiator in these discussions between the two parties.
Written Question 008 – 1(6): PYs in the Schools
I just want to digest the Minister’s response when I ask questions.
Mr. Speaker, my written question is for the Minister responsible for Education.
How many funded teaching positions (PYs) did the Department of Education have for the 1999-2000 school year?
How many funded teaching positions (PYs) did the Department of Education have for the 2000-2001 school year?
How many funded teaching positions (PYs) did the Department of Education have for the 2001-2002 school year?
How many funded teaching positions (PYs) does the Department of Education have for the 2002-2003 school year?
Are Principal positions included as teaching positions in the above figures?
How many of the above positions are covered by the collective agreement between the Federation of Nunavut Teachers and the Government?
How many actual teachers were teaching in elementary, junior and senior high school classrooms in the 1999-2000 school year?
How many actual teachers were teaching in elementary, junior and senior high school classrooms in the 2000-2001 school year?
How many actual teachers were teaching in elementary, junior and senior high school classrooms in the 2001-2002 school year?
How many actual teachers are presently teaching in elementary, junior and senior high school classrooms in the 2002-2003 school year?
What was the total number of students registered in K-12 during the 1999-2000 school year?
What was the total number of students registered in K-12 during the 2000-2001 school year?
What was the total number of students registered in K-12 during the 2001-2002 school year?
As of March 1, 2003, what is the total number of students registered in K-12 during the 2002-2003 school year?
Tabled Document 087 – 1(6): Baker Lake and Rankin Inlet PPD Events
It is in both Inuktitut, Innuinaqtut and English.
This is in regards to the events that happened over the last month in regards to the decentralization of PPD to Baker Lake.
Bill 22, Bill 30 and Minister’s Statement 126-1(6) with Mr. Puqiqnak in the chair.
We will now break for 20 minutes prior to Committee of the Whole.
>>House recessed at 15:11 p.m. and resumed at 15:42 p.m.
In Committee of the Whole, we will be dealing with Bill 22, Bill 30, Minister’s Statements 126-1 (6).What is the wish of the Committee?
We would like to continue with Bill 30, Operations and Maintenance Act and from there we would like to deal with Bill 22 and also with the Minister of Justice.
Does the committee agree that we deal with those items?
The Minister just completed his opening remarks yesterday so I would like to call the Minister and his officials to approach the witness table.
You’re pretty recognisable.
Although we know who your officials are, could you please introduce them for the Members?
The officials that I have are my Deputy Minister, Nora Sanders and to my left Assistant Deputy Minister, Mala.
Just before we begin, I would like to remind the Members that according to Rule 77 (1), you have ten minutes to speak.
Please try to keep within the ten minute limit.
And according to Rule 77 (2), subject to the discretion of the Chair, a Member may speak more than once to a matter under discussion but not until every Member wishing to speak has spoken.
If there are no general comments, Ms. Williams.
Ms. Williams (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman and welcome to the Minister and his officials.
I don’t have very lengthy comments to make but I would just like to say that the Department of Justice has a very important job to do that deals with the lives of people, the public.
In regards to justice and the RCMP, those are the types of jobs that this department does.
We all know that in our communities, the RCMP has to be a friend of the people because they deal with the protection of the public.
Sometimes we try to make sure that there is good justice done and the money that is going to be used for the Department of Justice, looking at them, I’m very happy to see some of the programs have increased funding.
It will help out the people of Nunavut.
The money is not just geared for the department but it’s for the public.
The Department of Justice deals with the lives of people and to prevent people from breaking the law.
We all know it’s the last resort that they have to deal with the justice system.
People try to assist them with the job that they do.
In Arctic Bay, recently, there was an individual over there who dealt with spousal assault counselling.
Although there are those people who deal with the public in the communities such as social workers, they try to help the people who get into trouble with the law just to make sure that being incarcerated is the last resort.
Looking at those things that I just mentioned, we have to try to make sure that the department does their job properly.
Even though there are those things that the Department of Justice does, there are usually some problems that come about that have to be dealt with.
The department should be educating the public out there to see what things the public can do to prevent crime and to keep from going to jail.
We think about a person who committed a crime, they go to court and they’re represented by their lawyer but we don’t always understand what is happing because the accused does not talk.
It’s the lawyer who is protecting the accused who does the talking for the person who committed the crime.
There has to be more programs to help the people of Nunavut in the Department of Justice to prevent them from committing crimes in the first place.
I would like to talk to some of these issues as we review some of the other pages under the department.
I’ll be asking questions as we go page by page with the Department of Justice and review the various programs that they are funding.
The person whose name is on my list. Mr. Irqittuq.
I have talked about some of the issues previously in the House including recommendations to be used by the department and some stuff the department has heard before in regards to the protection of people and educating people.
Others are seemingly new ideas that are beyond the feeble minds of the planners, but perhaps they are already under consideration.
In regards to people who have to go through the court process, and who end up in another community awaiting their sentence and that creates problems for the community where the individual is originating from as well as to the community who is receiving the remand prisoner.
They can’t understand all of the reasons why the individual is sent outside of the community and it tends to create a problem in the community where they are sent to.
This is especially when these people are pretty well just left to their own devices in that community and they are only identified when the court has come to town and residents find out why that person is in their community.
These people are not given adequate accommodation and if they don’t have a family, this can be very traumatizing to them.
There is an individual who experienced that in my community of Hall Beach.
Those types of practices have to be addressed by the Department of Justice.
We all know that it is a difficult job that the Department of Justice has to undertake in Nunavut.
The biggest single issue is when a person enters the court system, their court date is continually deferred and they have to reappoint another date and the people who have their lives disrupted and who are forced to put their lives on hold and this can really stress people out.
In the Inuit tradition, it would already have been dealt with, issues resolved and forgiveness asked for from all the parties.
Especially the young people, what the court system does has been to cause some youth to commit suicide, because the court can’t get into the community right away, they have to wait for another date and it really bothers those people, worrying about what the outcome would be once they go to court.
They start to worry about what might happen to them when they go to court.
If you don’t have to go to court, you don’t worry about it, but those people who have to re-book their appointments, they really worry and it gives them undue stress which clouds their decision making process.
It should be solved, I know that we can’t change the legislation that we have, but maybe we could make it easier for the judges to arrange courts for certain times of the year.
If Inuit traditions and justice practices were recognized and accepted for their common sense approach to deal with their own problems, then these problems would largely vanish.
Those are the things that I’d like to say at this time.
Yesterday, in my capacity as the chairperson of the Committee, I had a chance to speak on the issue but I’ll be brief as some of the issues I was going to raise have already mentioned.
I used to be a part of the Community Justice Committee for five years in my community.
The acts that are under the criminal code from the Federal Government cannot be changed when you’re working with the Department of Justice.
You have to abide by them.
I don’t know how it is at this time but there are a lot of people who have been taken to court and the case is postponed and a lot of times, some of them have committed suicide because they have to wait so long for their next court date.
There is too much postponement of these court cases and too many cases going to court.
It seems as though we just want to take people to court for any reason.
How can we stop this tendency to charge people prior to attempting to resolve the conflict?
This is a foreign and confrontational practice inherited from our imperialistic colonial conquerors.
We take people to court by getting them charged and degrading each other in the process, especially when there is no serious offence committed, except to our society.
There are good solutions out there that we can use so there won’t be too much suicide.
There are inmates who are incarcerated for long periods of time although they are generally good people at heart.
Maybe it is cast in stone and rigid.
I think that you lose your identity when you are taken through the justice system or the court system.
In the past, we were directed to speak with the people who have done us wrong and advise them about what they’re doing.
A lot of times today, there are people who have been charged through the court system who are then personally affected in their psychological being and start to suffer low self-esteem.
A lot of times they have to postpone their court cases and they start thinking they are unworthy and not contributing to society, so they become suicidal.
These are the mindsets suffered by the prisoners.
This is a big problem and a profound reason for the losses we are suffering.
We need to start looking at real solutions because we have laws in place to make war, and this is insufferable as everywhere people want to fight each other and now the world is on the brink of war because of legislation.
A lot of times we charge other people because we don’t like them and we look for little things that we want to charge them with.
And today in different countries, they’re fighting over legislation and laws.
It’s embarrassing to see people wanting to go to war.
At the same time in Nunavut, people go to court and try to make the other person look bad in front of other people.
I think the justice system should be in place to help people, rehabilitate people because there are a lot of people with evil thoughts who want to commit heinous crimes.
Welcome our guests and witnesses for the Department of Justice.
The Minister of Justice, and the Deputy Minister, and the Assistant Deputy Minister. Very briefly, a lot of the comments that we made earlier are very true.
When a person has been convicted in court, they are punished.
The justice system, the court system is always going to be there.
There is always going to be people going through the court system.
Although we are not happy about it, as soon as the person is judged and sentenced, they have to send them out of the community to corrections.
As soon as they are incarcerated, they leave their wives, their families, and children.
The family that is left behind when they are incarcerated are in a situation where when one parent is not there, they do not have a parent to rely on.
A lot of times, some charges are summary convictions and some are longer under indictable offences.
I know that we are always going to have to use the court system to punish people.
As Inuit, or as an individual, we used to have some sort of justice system, traditionally.
Also they used to have a group of advisors to do that kind of thing, when someone did something wrong under our Inuit tradition, we had a similar justice system.
We used to have counsellors to deal with that person, but today we have a system where a person is charged and they have to go though the system and they do not know these people who are defending them, or the prosecutors, or the judge, they do not know these people.
They do not know who this defendant is and they charge him according to the facts and then they have to leave their families when they are incarcerated.
I do not have any other names.
Would you like to go to the main estimates?
Page 5-5. Justice.
Branch Summary. Operations and Maintenance. $2 million, 562 thousand. Ms. Williams.
My question under 5-5, on the contract services, the contract services for the previous year and this year, there is an increase there.
What kind of contract services are you adding?
The contract services have increased when we have to hire casuals or people to do temporary contract services.
I know it has increased and that you hire temporary contractors.
When we don’t have the necessary staff, we have to hire contractors to temporarily hire people for policing for example.
We have to hire contractors when we don’t have enough staff.
That’s why this has increased for the next year.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you. I know my colleague know that on 5-6, this $327 thousand dollars, total, on that page, this is part of the section on 5-6.
In 2003/2004, so you already know how many contractors you’re going to hire; is that why you have that in place?
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you. Mr. Okalik.
This is an amendment from last year because we have been in place for three years.
We now know pretty well how much they need to increase to hire contractors.
So, other expenses, there’s been a big increase of up to $130 thousand dollars.
What other expenses does that cover?
You’re talking about $130 thousand dollars.
Yes we’ve had to pay other expenses for other IT programs that were under Public Works and Services.
It’s for information and technology services.
Ms. Williams (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 5-6 is part of the total Operations and Maintenance.
My last question is the last one, Victim Assistance Fund.
It used to be $90 thousand dollars but there is nothing this year and I had asked within the legislature and was responded to by the Minister about this Victim Assistance Committee that will be formed.
When they’re forming a Victim’s Assistance Committee, what kind of funding are they going to have?
It seems as though you have nothing for victim assistance during the next year.
How are you going to fund the committee?
Last year we had provided these for victim assistants.