Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Legislative Assembly increase efforts to provide interpretation into regionally appropriate official languages when standing and special committees hold public meetings in communities outside of the capital. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the Minister for that compassionate response. It's great to point to the federal government and try to get compassion from them. I'm talking to the Minister on the floor here; he needs to demonstrate and lead with some compassion from our government. This perverse practice of deducting garnishees from tax refunds from Income Assistance is going to lead to excessive hardships for many NWT residents who received CERB payments. Can the Minister tell us whether this situation is being tracked and what percentage of total Income Assistance recipients are suffering from this...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that simultaneous interpretation of committee proceedings into any official language should be made available to Members or witnesses appearing before committee, with a one-week notice; and further, that the availability of this service should be communicated clearly with Members and any witnesses. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, who administers Income Assistance. First, I would like the Minister to confirm that it is this government's position that a garnishee of a tax refund is counted as unearned income and is deducted from Income Assistance payments to that client. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Just very briefly, it is hard to believe that Members have the right to use any official language in the House as a result of the Official Languages Act but it is not actually recognized or incorporated into our rules. This will make sure that the rules reflect the law. It is an important motion, and I expect that everybody is going to vote in favour of this. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of things. I neglected to thank the interpreters who do such tremendous work for us here in the Assembly. I have known some of them for many years and have great confidence in their ability to help us understand each other a lot better. I neglected to thank them. I also wanted to thank the Member for Monfwi for bringing this matter forward because I think it is going to push us to the next level in terms of making sure that we properly recognize and implement use of official languages in this Assembly. I think that we have come up with a variety of...

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Minister for that. I appreciate it, and I look forward to hearing what the public has to say in terms of the revenue side of the equation because I just don't think we've paid enough attention to it. I did neglect to mention one other thing. We need a new arrangement with the federal government where we get to keep more of our source revenues. We've got to start to cut those apron strings from Ottawa and find ways to become more self-sufficient, and that, as I said, means a new fiscal arrangement with Ottawa where we get to keep all or a greater portion of...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Those of us who have been around for a while may remember when we used to have a languages bureau. It was quite an operation. There were probably 40, 50 staff there who were available and doing work in all of the official languages and developing curriculum, all kinds of great work. Unfortunately, we do not have that capacity anymore, or it's still there perhaps in different forms. However, that issue was raised with us as well as the need for better interpreter training and accreditation. That was raised to us in the written submissions, verbal submissions, and it was...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. What I'm trying to reconcile is: clearly corporate income tax is not a great way to try to finance a government, especially when it's bouncing up and down. Look at what was predicted main estimates in the current year, $25 million, and then we're only going to get $1.9 million in the current year? I know the pandemic and so on is going on, but this just doesn't seem to be a very reliable way to, or a completely unpredictable way to get revenues for the government. What is the Minister doing to try to stabilize the revenue side of the equation in some kind of predictable way...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am not going to read what is on pages 10 and 11, but just to refresh Members' memory and for those who may be listening, there are some immediate changes that we can make. We have started to do some of this, where we try to make sure that we have interpretation available for the entire sitting day, that there are at least a couple of interpreters available; we are going to look at including statistics around use of official languages in the House in future annual reports from the Legislative Assembly, making sure that some of our basic documents are made available in all...