Herb Mathisen
Northern News Services
Published Friday, June 6, 2008

YELLOWKNIFE - Dave Ramsay, MLA for Kam Lake, raised concerns with Minister of Justice Jackson Lafferty over the reduction of program delivery personnel at the North Slave Correctional Centre (NSCC) on Monday.

With proposed cuts to sex offender and family violence program delivery officers, Ramsay said he was concerned that managers, who are slated to deliver the programs in place of program officers, will be over-tasked and may be under-qualified.

"We can't slough off the delivery of family violence and sex offender programs to other personnel," said Ramsay.

Ramsay also pointed to the "collapse" of a deputy warden of programs position, whose duties will be in the hands of a sentence administrator "who obviously would not be an expert on programming that would be required at the centre."

Lafferty said there would be no impact on program delivery at NSCC with the proposed position cuts, as case manager positions could potentially be filled by the program delivery officers whose jobs are being cut.

Ramsay asked the minister to produce evidence of the expertise of those who would be delivering the programs.

Bonuses should be earned

Glen Abernethy, MLA for Great Slave, asked Premier Floyd Roland on Monday whether he was developing a process "that would award or reward senior managers for outstanding performance as opposed to the typical or standard 'everybody gets a bonus.'"

"$1.65 million is paid out annually to these employees," said Abernethy, adding that $550,000 is paid each year to senior managers and employees of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation.

Roland said no one, as of yet, had been awarded a bonus for the 2007/08 fiscal year.

"Given current fiscal realities, it is definitely time to reconsider how this government awards bonuses to senior management," said Abernethy. "It's time for (them) to start earning their fat bonuses."

"Once (a bonus) becomes an expectation, it serves no purpose," Abernethy said in an interview.

Lights out at the legislative assembly

Before breaking for committee Monday afternoon, power outages had already disrupted the session on four occasions.

The first occurred during the member statement of Tom Beaulieu, MLA for Tu Nedhe. A later outage muted a lively exchange between Dave Ramsay, MLA for Kam Lake, and Minister of Justice Jackson Lafferty.

Consensus of humour

Speaker Paul Delorey welcomed a group of federal senior civil servants in the gallery Monday afternoon who were visiting to "witness consensus government working."

The statement drew laughs from some regular MLAs, who have complained about the lack of consultation with cabinet when preparing the budget.