Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. The sooner the better. Of course, it's one thing for the changes to be made and another for those affected to be informed. So what activities does the department plan to carry out, first, to identify those maintenance orders affected by the change; and secondly, to inform child support payment recipients that a new regime of annual payment recalculation is being introduced? Sorry, Mr. Speaker. Those are questions for the Minister. Mahsi.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Well, I guess I just will put on the record that it's disappointing to see a decline in funding for sport, recreation, and youth from what we had in our main estimates last year compared to what we're going to do in 20222023. At the same time that there should have been a collective agreement increase, we're spending less money on sport, recreation, and youth. And I just don't think that that's sends out a good signal. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. Today I will speak about the complex legal issues involving parental payments following separation between spouses and their dependent children.

Our Children's Law Act provides the legal framework for this support under Child Support Guidelines which also specify how maintenance payments will be calculated. Typically, a court order is issued specifying the amount of child support owed and establishing an annual process for evaluating and resetting the amount of support to be paid. These court orders usually say that parties will exchange financial information...

Okay, thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, okay, when I look at page 361, I can see the COVID relief funding for 20202021 but there's nothing after that. So, you know, why then I'm going to go back now to page 360 and, you know, the main estimates for 20212022, $5.507 million. And then for 20222023, $5.38 million. Why is there still a decline even though the COVID relief money is not being there's none in last year or in 20222023, why is this declining? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I know our government seems to be pretty good at building highways. You know, Inuvik to Tuk but there's still no road that doesn't quite go into Whati. And we just keep building these roads and we don't really do very good planning around them, including public safety. So I just want to urge the Minister and the department to get on with this important work. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Yeah okay, no, thanks for that; I appreciate that. As part of that process, are we going to be looking at, you know, response times, use of various languages, and effectiveness/efficiency measures of the system as well? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I think this is where the integrated case management program is found, but there's no line item; there's no nothing. It's hard to know what expenditures there are on the program. Can I get some detail about that and whether the budget is increasing, decreasing? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks for that. Yeah, I'm looking at this. It's clearly a reduction. That's not the way it's classified, though, by the Financial Management Board. I believe this is classified as an FMB approved adjustment. Can the Minister confirm that, yes or no? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. And not knowing enough about the system and how it works and whether statistics are tracked or not, I'm happy to get whatever the Minister can provide and then we'll go from there. Thanks.

Thanks, Madam Chair. No, I appreciate the Minister's commitment to make that information public, and I'm one of the Members that actually pushed for a rationalization of resources here because there's just very little, if any, interest whatsoever in oil and gas resources in the Northwest Territories. So why continue to spend money on managing them when there's no activity taking place. So I understand and pushed for that work to be done.

So when the money is cut, where does it go? Thanks, Madam Chair.