Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. In remarks in Committee of the Whole the other day, there used to be an additional $373,000 for midwifery in 2019-2020, bringing the total resources devoted to midwifery to $1.78 million. There used to be a staff complement of 8.5 full-time-equivalent people. Could the Minister of Health and Social Services summarize where these positions will be located and how services will be offered to other communities? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that information and his good work on the file. Lastly, I think I have done my part in trying to share some of the good news about a Northwest Territories midwifery program, but I think that a lot more could be done to promote this significant achievement, so can the Minister tell us what plans his department has to communicate and promote a Northwest Territories midwifery program? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I want to thank the Minister for that and I am certainly interested in finding out more about how the services are going to be expanded to all our communities. I am not aware of any plans to monitor and evaluate the new Northwest Territories midwifery program and publicly report implementation and overall progress. Can the Minister describe how the NWT midwifery program will be monitored and evaluated, and how the results will be publicly reported?

Merci, Monsieur le President. I rise today to make my fourth annual midwifery statement. The Northwest Territories Midwifery Program has one of the longest gestation periods in the history of this Assembly, but now there is some good news to report.

In response to my questioning during the Committee of the Whole review of the Department of Health and Social Services budget earlier in this sitting, there is now confirmation of new 2019-2020 funding of $373,000 for three positions. One of them is a full-time midwifery clinical specialist and a three-quarter-time midwife position, both in...

I thank the Minister for that commitment. Can the Minister give me an idea as to when he expects to make this information public?

Merci, Monsieur le President. I would like to follow up again with the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. He talked about two different ways of capturing some benefits from significant discovery licences. One is in the initial call for bids, and second, in the actual issuance of the significant discovery licence itself. In the call for bids, has a decision been made by the Minister on what the rates would be for significant discovery licences in the future? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the Minister for that explanation. It was a fear of risk of litigation, so that we now don't get any benefits from these significant discovery licences. The Minister last week said that we should not, "set rules without a transparent and open process." The Minister also said that he will consider charging rental rates under the terms and conditions for future bids in the Northwest Territories when we put out plans for petroleum exploration in the future. Can the Minister tell us who is consulted in setting those rates and what they will be?

Merci, Monsieur le President. Last week, I made a Member's statement about the great post-devolution resource giveaway, where the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment issued 10 significant discovery licences that tie up petroleum resources forever without any benefits to NWT residents. The original exploration rights were issued by the federal government. Can the Minister tell us whether the federal government made any provision for fees or work requirements in the issuance of those original rights? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I do have just a few brief comments that I would like to make. I want to thank the committee for letting me sit in on a lot of the meetings that they had regarding the report. I am quite pleased with the recommendations that came out of the report.

911 is something that was being worked on when I was on city council back in 1997 to 2006. This was not in our mandate, and I do appreciate the work of a couple of Ministers to bring this forward. I want to commend them for their hard work in getting this bill to us and that this is finally going to happen in the life of this...

Merci, Monsieur le President. On the occasion of International Women's Day, I would like to speak about what we are doing to promote women in leadership. I attended the lively public hearing in Yellowknife on January 17th by the Special Committee on Increasing the Representation of Women. There were about 30 participants, including media, and I would like to commend everyone for the respectful dialogue and the ideas that were put forward.

There were three main themes presented. One idea was to run elections for a woman and a man in each riding in the NWT to ensure that half of the MLAs are...