Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Regarding mandatory death benefits, the existing wording excludes same-sex couples from those benefits.

Mr. Speaker, I wish I had a clear, concise answer for that question. I don’t. I can’t say that child poverty exists because of one specific reason. There are a whole range of reasons that there is child poverty. We have, as a government, put a significant amount of money, as the Member noted in his statement, into programs over the last few years and I guess we must be just having trouble keeping up with the growth and the cost of living in an overheated economy. Because one would expect with the kind of investment that we’ve made with our small population, that more of a difference should...

Yes, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right. I’ve had some discussions with the deputy minister on this issue because it has been raised from the private sector over the past six months. We are, right now, in the process of trying to decide what level of consultation, and how much of the act we should take out for consultation or whether we should do a focused amendment or propose a focused amendment just for this one issue. Right now, that’s the stage we’re at, is trying to determine just how far to go with the proposed amendment. The answer to the Member’s question is, yes, we’re looking at...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Right now, under the Conflict of Interest Act, if two people are married and one person is a member of a board or a council, they have to follow the conflict of interest provision. I will just take an example that I am familiar with: the Legislative Assembly Executive Council Act. Under the conflict of interest provisions here, if a Member is married, they have to declare all of the interests of their spouse. They have to make sure that there isn’t a conflict of interest. However, if the couple is not married, it wouldn’t necessarily apply to them. So we are fixing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If a DEA agrees that is the approach they want to take, they are welcome to take it and we will support them in doing it. We would be very happy to do that. There are an awful lot of innovative approaches being taken by DEAs across the Northwest Territories right now. In Lutselk’e they’ve been running an on-the-land program, which has been proven to dramatically increase the attendance rate for kids who are typically at risk for not attending. There are attendance programs that are run at schools all across the Northwest Territories. So this is an issue that I have...

Thank you, Madam Chair. What this is changing is, if you look at the first section in quotation marks where it says “section 6 of Bill,” there’s no number there and now it says “Bill 17.” At the time this was initially presented to committee we didn’t know what number it would be. So it would be a normal course of business to make this change as part of the committee review had they considered our bills. But this is to put the bill number in.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. What this amendment is intended to do is to address the concern that conflicts of interest may well arise where couples live together for less than two years. The fact that they lived together may give rise to the perception of a conflict of interest. This amendment applies both to heterosexual couples and same-sex couples because, right now, for instance, in the Conflict of Interest Act, if a heterosexual couple were to be living together for six months in a conjugal relationship, the same act wouldn’t apply to them even though there may be the implication of a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I didn’t say that it was a waste of time to develop programs to encourage children to be in school, nor did I say it was a waste of time to encourage families to make sure that their kids attended school. But there’s a big difference between finding a family that isn’t sending a kid to school because he hasn’t got any shoes and finding a way to support getting some shoes on the feet of that kid so that he is comfortable coming to school.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As outlined in the opening comments by the chair of the standing committee, there were a number of issues that were raised in the review with the standing committee and a commitment was made to come back with amendments during the standing committee process. But when we appeared before the standing committee with the amendments, the suggestion by the standing committee was that we deal with them in Committee of the Whole. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.