Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the WSCC is focused on ensuring safe workplaces and ensuring that the employees have safe environments to work so that no injuries occur. The Safe Advantage program details, as the Member has indicated, with businesses over $40,000 in assessment. It was found, Mr. Speaker, that large businesses, due to their accident records and claim costs drive the rates for all businesses in the Northwest Territories.

If the WSCC can get large businesses to lower their accident rates, then it will lower assessment rates for everybody, including small businesses. So their...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate the Member's comments. I just want to be clear that this is not lip service, this demonstrates our commitment to making this a reality and making this happen. With respect to change of sex designation, gender, we believe that we will be able to do the work necessary to put this into effect by April of 2017. The same is true for single names, we believe that we should be able to get the work done through regulations and others to make it official and effective in April, 2017.

Implementing Aboriginal fonts is not as simple. The department has been reaching...

I don't have at my fingertips the cost of the Stanton Territorial Hospital program that I previously mentioned, and I'll certainly get that information for the Member and committee, but we do provide money to different organizations across the Northwest Territories, not specifically for FASD but for children who are struggling with a range of disabilities which can and often does include FASD. So what I'll do is I'll pull together some of that information and I'll share it with the Member and with Committee of the Whole.

Birth certificates today do not include anything other than the Roman fonts.

Mr. Speaker, the national level Ministers responsible for Health and Social Services or Persons with Disabilities, get together on an annual basis. There's actually a side group been established to work on issues related to FASD. We fund the national FASD Research Group that goes out and pulls together data and helps develop promotional materials to encourage people to abstain from drinking while pregnant. As the Member said earlier, FASD is 100 per cent preventable but not curable. So they're doing a significant amount of work.

Next year, the Northwest Territories will be taking the lead on...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and as I said during the public hearing, the Department of Health and Social Services is not the expert on languages or fonts. Education, Culture and Employment certainly has a lot more of knowledge and awareness in this area. I do know that fonts are available. They exist in different formats and databases that are used across the Northwest Territories by different groups of bodies, and there are keyboards with different fonts on them. So, you know, I imagine fonts can be used in many, many different avenues other than just birth certificates. But for us, if someone's...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this bill will allow us to use traditional fonts, but the place names are legal name. We will be using the official place names or official community names. If those community names include traditional fonts, then certainly those will be on the birth certificate.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me on my left is Ken Chutskoff, the legislative counsel, and on my left, Debbie DeLancey, deputy minister, Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm here to present Bill 5, An Act to Amend the Vital Statistics Act. The bill makes a number of amendments to the Vital Statistics Act. The Vital Statistics Act has been in force since 2013 and these are the first amendments to the act. Societal attitudes to transgender people are changing and it's also a time of reconciliation with Aboriginal people. The amendment to remove the requirement for gender reassignment surgery from the act brings the Northwest Territories in line with human rights decisions and progress in other provinces and territories.

Proof of completed...

Mr. Speaker, by design the Safe Advantage program has a review that is done every five years. They had a review done a number of years ago after the first five years was completed that talked about the value of supports and resulted in some changes. There will be another review in a couple years, at which point they'll be able to assess whether or not the Safe Advantage program is meeting its needs to drive down costs for all employers across the Northwest Territories. I look forward to seeing that review. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.