Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we return to this House in the midst of COVID-19, I can start to feel something in the air again, and that is the entrenchment of the status quo creeping back in. However, when you are in the eye of a hurricane, you often cannot feel the whiplash around you. I can feel a sense of complacency sneaking into this House. There will be another wave of COVID-19. We are heading into one of the largest depressions in any of our lifetimes. Let's not also forget that we are in the midst of a climate emergency, which will cost alone on our infrastructure billions of dollars...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am getting down to the weeds in these sections because I have some very specific issues with them. One of my issues, as I have raised with the Minister, is that the land titles office does not let you search by the name of a property owner. You have to find the lot address and the legal address and then find who owns it. I get that there are some personal privacy issues, but what other jurisdictions have done is they have allowed all corporate-owned land to be searchable by name because those same privacy concerns do not apply to corporate entities. I, for example...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes. I guess I will look forward to that conversation. I think if you can give the office marching orders to bring their systems online, they will tell you how long that will take. If it takes a few years, I can live with that, but clearly it's something we should get started. Similarly, this is one of those weird sections of Justice where we have our personal property registration, a very underutilized system. We have regulations of securities trading, as expertise, we struggle to keep/have in the Northwest Territories. Can the Minister update me if there is any...

Thank you, Madam Chair. That is exactly what I was looking at. I just think it would be one of these helpful transparency things if corporations' records were not behind a pay wall and I could go in and I could search any corporate entity and track their legal history, as I can do with most jurisdictions. Similarly with the land titles office, at one point, we were going to close down the land titles office during this COVID-19, essentially not allowing anyone to transfer real property. Can the Minister commit to bringing land titles online so that they can conduct their business even during a...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Right now, if I want to look up corporate registries document, it would cost me $4. Can the Minister tell me how much in revenue the corporate registries' online system makes us each year?

I am happy to hear that we are applying a gender- and equity-based analysis to all new programs and service delivery. Perhaps the Premier could provide the Regular MLAs with how exactly that is occurring. Additionally, during that same speech, the Premier committed to amalgamating the Departments of MACA and Lands. When can we expect to see that change, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following this House electing the Honourable Caroline Cochrane as our Premier, she gave a speech on October 18, 2019, where a number of commitments were made. One of them was that the Department of ITI would be renamed the "Department of Economic Diversification and Development." Mr. Speaker, my question is: when can we expect to see that change?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We all have a collective responsibility to do more to make sure our Indigenous languages thrive. This is not an easy task. Young speakers under 25 are much are more likely to gain fluency than those aged 25 to 45, due to a result of intergenerational shame from residential schools and other complicated factors. We have lost a few generations of speakers. I believe there is much more we need to do. There needs to be more oversight in the programs we are delivering. I believe many of the single-class programs we are offering right now are simply failing. We need immersion...

Thank you, Madam Chair. A number of exploration companies are not eligible for federal wage subsidy programs given that they don't really have revenue or have the qualified drop in revenue. Can the Minister update me on any advocacy work to address this gap with the federal government or any intentions for the department to address this gap? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, the Northern Food Development Program is application based. A number of the South Slave where we have fertile land have been unable to access this. I know it's not fully subscribed to, so I think it's a bit of a problem with the program as opposed to a lack of desire to develop more food and food security. Could the Minister update me if whether there will be a review of this program to make sure that, when we have this $550,000 here, it's actually going to get out the door? Thank you, Madam Chair.