Jackson Lafferty

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. To my left I have Mr. Dave Grundy. He’s the CEO of the Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission. To my immediate right is Judy Kainz, director of prevention services and safety officer. To my far right is Ms. Emerald Murphy, legal counsel. Mahsi.

That’s absolutely not true. My department has been meeting with the Yellowknife Day Care Association on numerous occasions. Since mid-2014, we’ve been meeting with them, giving them options to consider and working with them. We have provided some assistance from my department so they can explore other options as well. We will continue, again, working with the organization to find an alternative solution as well.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. I’m pleased to introduce Bill 65, An Act to Amend the Safety Act. Bill 65 proposes several amendments to the Safety Act. The objective of those consultations and this bill is to improve occupational health and safety.

The reasons for the amendments set out in Bill 65 are generally new occupational health and safety regulations have been developed jointly by the Northwest Territories and Nunavut for recommendation to their respective Commissioners where there are insufficient authority in the Safety Act for a small portion of proposed new regulations.

As well, Canada has...

Obviously, my department needs to work very closely with the Sahtu Education Council as well. We have been working with them and the Colville Lake School. This is not new to us. We are fully aware of it. I will commit to getting back to the Member as soon as we have that information and we have deliberations. The next step, once that occurs, I will immediately follow up with the Member.

Again, the Sahtu leadership and the representatives have been working very closely with Colville Lake along with my department. We are going to push them forward as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The first discussion was in March, and as a result, we’ve been in contact, and also vice versa, with the Manitoba board, so the discussion took place from there. We wanted to expedite the process, so we involved firefighters to get their perspective as well. If I’ve missed out on the key topics or detail, I can get Mr. Grundy to elaborate more.

First and foremost, I have to commend Colville Lake leadership exploring options on how they can build the new school. Obviously, we are very interested. There has been a process that we go through with any capital infrastructure here in the Northwest Territories. Part of that is Colville Lake. The Member has been asking questions in the House, as well, and I’m fully aware of that. There are pressing issues, as well, that we are faced with, but this is an area that we are currently exploring with the leadership of Colville on how the P3 can work.

Once a proposal is submitted, then we...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. We want it to be comparable to other provincial and territorial jurisdictions across Canada. We are covering the majority of diseases throughout Canada. We want to be compatible to other jurisdictions and part of the reason why, obviously, we brought forward our discussion with ENR, as I stated in my statement, is due to a fact that committee members want for us to explore further with that department to recognize forest firefighters and why they’re excluded or they should be included. So, those are discussions that we’ve been having and if we need to make changes, we will be...

That’s why we’re trying to find out what truly happened here. There’s always two sides of the story. We need to gather the facts so this student can move forward. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

We do have a variety of programs. We just expanded and enriched our SFA programming, and on the particular Access Program, there is a variety of funding through the college, through our department, and there’s also federal funding as well. So, again, depending on the program the individual is taking, we need to gather more information and have the college sit down with the student before the student quits or walks out of the college. We need to resolve this issue. We are, again, dealing with upwards of 1,600 students, so we have to be mindful of when they applied. If they are late in applying...