Rylund Johnson

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. You know, this is we spoke to a number of communities and their landfills are largely becoming one of their biggest budget crunches. And that's largely due to water license obligations that have been placed on them, environmental regulations that have been placed on them, which are all well and fine but at some point if we're going to keep putting these obligations on communities and their landfills and not provide them any training, capacity building, or further funding, it's just setting them up for failure. And I know quite a few of our landfills are not in...

Yeah, thank you. I just want to speak a little bit on behalf of the chair. You know, he's got some sumps in Nunakput that are approaching the end of their life, and they're sitting there, and those oil companies are just hanging on to them and they're not remediating them because they don't want to put the money in. And as long as they just hold on to them, the GNWT, it's not their asset, they can't really do much, so. I think we really ought to revisit that and not let those get to the point where they're literally falling into the ocean in some case. And right now we don't seem to have the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, received second reading in the Legislative Assembly on November 2nd, 2022, and was referred to the Standing Committee on Government Operations for review.

On January 18th, 2023, the standing committee held a public hearing and completed its clause by clause review with the Minister of Finance I believe. The committee received no submissions on this bill. I thank the committee for reviewing this legislation. Individual Members may have additional comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I've asked this as a written question before and didn't get an answer, but I think the Minister's going to answer it this time.

My question is for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Everyone has acknowledged that there is a municipal infrastructure gap; however, the most recent numbers that are publicly available on the size of that gap are from 2014. My question is, can the Minister provide an updated analysis of the municipal infrastructure gap, and the year in which it was completed, as follows:

What is the current gap by community;

What is the current...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's hard to find a specific budget line for Ebikes buried in the two and a half billion dollars so I was hoping the Minister of Infrastructure could tell us what is the total budget for this rebate program? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It seems to me that there are a number of solutions to make sure that the nursing licensing process runs smoothly. Ontario is exploring as of right nursing licenses for any other Canadian nurse. A number of provinces have issued ministerial directives with timelines in them. Perhaps some sort of temporary license while the whole process goes through is possible. Or, you know, perhaps it's as simple as accepting a less kind of formal version of the paperwork so we can make sure that these processes are running timely. I don't know exactly what the solution is, but I have...

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, I think there's a bit of a I appreciate the Minister saying that. And, you know, I think there's a bit of a first step is a meeting to kind of figure out if they recognize any processes they could speed up on their end. I recognize a lot of this is in other provinces' nursing associations hands. But it seems to me if this is just going to be the reality accepted, then some sort of larger step is needed. And whether that is legislating timelines, ultimately we do have control, whether that's a ministerial directive. I do believe that, you know, if they...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We all know we're at a nursing shortage and the competition to get nurses is getting stricter and stricter. But one of the things that should not be a barrier to hiring more nurses is a backlog process to get nurses from some other jurisdictions licensed.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to walk you through a timeline of a nurse who recently moved to the Northwest Territories, started applying for jobs, took a couple months to get through the interview process and get a contract in hand. Then once they took that contract, they went and applied to the Registered Nursing...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that Committee Report 3819(2), the Standing Committee on Government Operations report on the review of Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, be received and adopted by the Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's quite clear that the scope of practice of our pharmacists is falling well behind the rest of Canada. And whether that be for emergency prescriptions, prescriptions for minor ailments, adapting in managing prescriptions, ordering lab tests, there is all sorts of things that pharmacists can do in the rest of Canada that they can't do here. So my question for the Minister of health is will we expand the scope of practice for our pharmacists? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.