MLAs weigh in on session
Stanton security, power bills, jr kindergarten among expected topics
Cody Punter
Northern News Services
Published Friday, January 30, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
With a fall election looming and the less than a year left in their term it would be easy to see how some MLAs might be willing coast to the finish line.
But Yellowknife's regular MLAs say they are planning to keep their foot on the gas as the legislative assembly gets set to reconvene next Wednesday.
"When I first was elected, the first term - basically the statement was, 'Well in the last year nothing happens because everything's winding down,'" said Frame Lake MLA Wendy Bisaro, who will be finishing up her second term this year.
"I was like 'what?' There's 12 months in this year and there's lots of opportunity to move things forward if there is a will and if there is a push from one or all the members to get something done, it can be done," she said.
Bisaro has a few things she hopes to accomplish with the limited time remaining in her term, not least of which is the need to push through legislation to create an ombudsman office for the territory. Although a motion in favour of an ombudsman passed unanimously in the legislative assembly last session, the government still needs to write the requisite legislation, she said.
"I think there will be some noise on that next session," she said. "If the legislation doesn't come forward before the end of the 17th (assembly) my personal fear is that it's going to get lost and it won't come back in the 18th."
Bisaro also plans to conduct a postmortem of the territory's controversial junior kindergarten program scaled back by the GNWT last fall. As of last December, nine communities had decided to opt out of it. Bisaro said she specifically wants to re-examine the funding formula which depends on taking money from school board surpluses rather than allocating new money for it.
"Obviously there's some failures on that front that need to be addressed," said Weledeh MLA Bob Bromley, who also listed the need to dissect junior kindergarten as a priority.
Bromley said he plans to tackle the security situation at Stanton Territorial Hospital during the upcoming session. Bromley publicly called out Health Minister Glen Abernethy last week saying the cabinet minister failed to take action after a patient flew into a rage in the hospital's emergency room last November. Security is present at the hospital but officers are forbidden from physically intervening. Another violent incident occurred Jan. 23 in the hospital's psychiatric ward that left three staff members injured.
Although she won't be leading the charge on this issue, Bisaro said she hopes to get to the bottom of the hospital's policy of non-intervention in crisis situations.
"It makes me wince," said Bisaro of the hospital's current policy. "I definitely think there needs to be some changes."
Yellowknife Centre MLA Robert Hawkins said he is planning to take on a range of issues.
At the top of his list are plans to find out whether taxpayers can save money on their power bills by getting rid of the Public Utilities Board and buying out Northland Utilities as the power provider for Yellowknife. Based on figures shared with MLAs by the territorial government, Hawkins says power rates could drop by as much as 10 cents per kilowatt hour if these two entities were done away with. Although Northland Utilities has a contract with the city, Hawkins said the GNWT should "step in and take the lead on this" as Northland ultimately buys its power provider from the territory.
"If we get rid of some of the middlemen, we could immediately lower our costs," he said. "I can't make it happen on my own. What we need is a bit of momentum here to be talking about power."
Aside from weeding through the budget, Range Lake MLA Daryl Dolynny said he has plans to pitch a new governance model for the airport that would see the GNWT sell off some of its assets to the private sector.
"Right now it's costing taxpayers about $2 million a year to keep (the airport) where it is today," he said. "It's been talked about before many times but I feel the seasonality is right."
Dolynny also hopes to pitch the idea of having a registry for lobbyists in the NWT.
"Devolution basically gave us more province-like powers, especially with the regulation of resources and having lobbyists coming to and fro to the territories," said Dolynny, adding the GNWT is one of the only jurisdiction in Canada without a registry.
The upcoming session starts on Feb. 4 and lasts
until March 12.
