Julie Green

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document, "Guiding Principles and Process Conventions for Consensus Government in the NWT." Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you to the Minister for that answer. Another situation that's like this that I'll bring to his attention is mothers with newborns. They often will take months of waiting to get the money paid, to get on with the support of the Canada Child Benefit. The other problem I want to bring to his attention is timing. So food and clothing allowances used to be paid at the beginning of the month. The Canada Child Benefit is paid in the last half of the month and people end up at food banks and other food security places earlier because they run out of money. Can the Minister say how people should...

Mahsi. Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. YWCA Yellowknife reports that eliminating the income assistance food and clothing allowance for children is already having a devastating impact on NWT families. For example, when women and children flee violent homes, it can take some time to have the Child Tax Benefit migrated to the person who left with the children. So for the Minister, if the income assistance applicant is not receiving the Canada Child Benefit because they're waiting for changes in taxation filing to go through, how...

Of course, the Minister knows that income assistance is a last resort. The criteria for receiving income assistance is that you have used every one of your resources, including your savings, selling your house, selling your car, that you have nothing left. That's the premise for applying for income assistance. So I want to ask, again, whether the Minister will ensure that this promise to increase food levels will, in fact, be part of this government's agenda as well?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of ECE. No, sorry. I have two sets of questions. I am on the wrong one. Heads up. My questions are for the Minister of Transportation. Just kidding. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture, and Employment. Is the Minister prepared to continue to stick to the promise made by the previous Finance Minister and continue catching up food allowances for income assistance recipients so that they are up to 2014 levels? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'll look forward to that confirmation from the Minister. Finally, I'm going to repeat the question that commentators and frontline service providers as well as I have been asking: will the Minister recognize that taking away the food and clothing allowance for children under 18 was the wrong thing to do and to reinstate that allowance immediately? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I'm wondering if the Minister can tell us if this issue can be addressed by paying food and clothing allowances until the Canada Child Benefit is available?

Thank you. As the chair of Social Development mentioned, we had several presentations at the public hearing at this bill, including one from the Rainbow Coalition of Yellowknife, which is a youth organization that supports people who are transgender and queer. I want to read a portion of their presentation because it helps to flesh out the section 42(1). So I'm quoting here: "Transgender identity at its core describes a person who feels like they are a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth by our medical system and/or by their caregivers or parents. There is no requirement...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it was 100 years ago this year that women got the right to vote. Women in Alberta were the first to be enfranchised and voters there elected the first female MLA, Louise McKinney, in 1917. Suffrage spread slowly across Canada, with women in Quebec getting the vote in 1940 and Aboriginal women along with men as well in 1960. Women slowly entered political life and in small numbers, and today we are still well short of parity.

A quarter of members of Parliament are women, and here in the NWT, as you know, there are just the two of us. This Assembly has committed...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I thank the Minister for making that commitment to remove the requirement for a statutory declaration from some kind of health professional in order for people to change their designation. I appreciate that the situation with minors is a little trickier because they're vulnerable people just by nature of their age, and I look forward to his further information on that pending his research. So my thanks to him and his officials, and my thanks as well to the Rainbow Coalition, Coleen Canney and Teale MacIntosh who made this original presentation to us on...