Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this Assembly recommends that the Legislative Assembly Board of Management make allowance for Members to be absent from the Assembly without financial penalty for up to four months due to pregnancy, childbirth, or the care of a Member’s child following birth or adoption. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Special Committee to Increase the Representation of Women in the Legislative Assembly worked hard to deliver the interim report that was tabled today and read into the record yesterday. We travelled extensively between the new year and the beginning of this session. We started in Fort Smith and then went on to Hay River, Fort Providence, and Detah. We also met with the public here in Yellowknife and at the Association of Communities earlier this month. We received a few written submissions. We are grateful for the dozens of people who took part in informal...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you went into most of the coffee shops in Yellowknife and you were with someone who required a baby change table, there is a good chance that that person would find a baby change table in the women's washroom. That is not the case here at the Legislative Assembly. There is nowhere for a parent to change a child except for the floor. There is also nowhere for a parent to calm a child or breastfeed or do other family-related activities.

The purpose of this motion is to make this building more family-friendly while it was designed by men and for men. Because it is a new...

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to waive rule 100(4) and to have Committee Report 14-18(3), Interim Report of the Special Committee to Increase the Representation of Women in the Legislative Assembly, moved into Committee of the Whole for consideration later today. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I request a recorded vote.

Thank you to the Minister for that response. I am concerned that this issue is fairly straightforward and that there are a number of sets of guidelines available to review from across the country, including from the College of Family Physicians, and I feel that it would be possible to move directly to implementation without streaming everything through additional studies. I guess my question for the Minister is how to improve uptake by medical practitioners to use some kind of screening brief intervention and referral tool.

Mr. Chair, I move that this Assembly recommends that the Legislative Assembly take the necessary steps to assist in ensuring that information on the NWT's consensus government is made available to any group, organization, or government in the Northwest Territories involved in teaching young women; and further, that the Legislative Assembly encourage its Members to be supportive of hands-on learning activities on consensus government such as school visits to the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. In my statement today I spoke about screening brief intervention and referral as a cost-effective way for healthcare providers to talk to their patients about the harmful effects of alcohol. This was also a recommendation of the report I spoke about in the House last year. My question is: has the Minister looked at developing guidelines, or adopting them from another jurisdiction, to provide for screening brief intervention and referral around alcohol consumption? Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In our travels, we discovered that there was very little information available to the people who attended our sessions about the roles and responsibilities of MLAs. They are often familiar with the work that we do in this House because they see the televised proceedings, or they may also read Hansard, but they have little understanding of the work that we do that is not televised, specifically the work of standing committees, special committees, constituency work, and the like. There was a request that we attempt to create a job description for the role of MLAs so that...

Thanks to the Minister for that response. In his statement yesterday, the Minster said the plan will address the recommendations in the OAG's report as well as "additional gaps that were found." Will the Minister please describe these additional gaps?