Kevin O'Reilly

I want to thank that Minister for that. In the Minister's replies to some email questions that I had sent, the Minister mentioned development of a suicide prevention and crisis response network in partnership with the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority. Can the Minister explain how this partnership will be brought to bear to support communities when a crisis occurs, where these resources will come from, and how communities can initiate the process themselves?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. This issue was raised by OpenNWT. I want to compliment the Chief Electoral Officer. For anybody who has seen her reports, there is a lot of detail in there. There are some good graphics and so on that she has developed and presented over time, but the style and content sort of changes from one report to the next. Sometimes, it is hard to track trends and so on over time. There were also some issues around how absentee ballots are reported, including electronic ballots and mail-in ballots. That arose in the last election. What this does is ask the Chief Electoral Officer to...

With that, Mr. Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the rules of the Legislative Assembly be amended to clearly state the right to use any official language when speaking in the Assembly; and further, that this right necessarily implies the right to be understood by those Members who do not speak that language; and furthermore, that the rules of the Legislative Assembly be amended to reflect the right of Members to receive interpretation in any official language. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Legislative Assembly makes interpreters available in most official languages when Members are sitting in the Chamber. On March 10, 2020, a Tlicho interpreter was not available due to a last-minute cancellation. The interpreter scheduled but had to cancel for personal reasons. The Member for Monfwi, Mr. Lafferty, rose on a point of privilege. He said the lack of interpretation impeded or prevented him from performing his parliamentary functions as a Member and asked the Speaker to adjourn the proceedings. The Speaker took the matter under advisement and the proceedings...

Merci, Monsieur le President. I do have some remarks to make on this bill. It proposes two sets of changes to the Employment Standards Act: unpaid emergency leave is created, and then there are waivers for group termination advance notice requirements. The Employment Standards Act is a significant legislation that tries to balance workers' rights versus employers' interests. I want to thank the Standing Committee on Social Development for their work. They found a better balance by clarifying the process for employers to seek waivers from group termination notice requirements. They also...

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks for that. There're a few options there. I think I've got a few other options that the Minister should consider, as well, like a resource tax or a production-based royalty. If we turn over to ITI, of course, further into the budget, and I'm not going to ask questions on that one because I've already exhausted those before, but we do know that this year, we're going to get zero royalties from diamond mining. Next year, I think it's predicted at $1.5 million. We've got to find a way to stabilize these revenues and make them more based on production rather than when...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Standing Committee on Government Operations consider the issues of interpreter and translator training and accreditation and the possibility of a future Government of the Northwest Territories languages bureau in the context of its review of the Official Languages Act. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. If I wasn't confused before. Are we getting any corporate taxes then in 2021-2022, or are we giving a whole bunch of money back to corporations? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the suggestions made on pages 10 and 11 of Committee Report 8-19(2) be investigated by the Office of the Speaker, the Board of Management, and the Office of the Clerk in an effort to make immediate improvements in the provision of official languages services; and further, if any of these suggestions are found to not be feasible at present, a plan to realize these outcomes be included in the official languages policy. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I, too, want to extend a lot of thanks to my colleagues on this side of the House for the work that we did together looking at the main estimates. People often just don't know how much work goes on behind the scenes here. We don't really do a very good job explaining this, but we met and reviewed the main estimates department by department with Ministers and their staff over a period of a couple of weeks. Then we had to work together as regular MLAs to figure out what we thought was missing or could be improved in the budget. There is an immense amount of work that goes on...