Wendy Bisaro

It’s nice to know that the Minister and I are on the same page. My next question was going to suggest that the Minister look at our neighbour to the west, the Yukon, who have some excellent information on-line. They have plain language information for residents. They have a fact sheet on estate planning, which is one of the resources that they have there and I think that’s something that we certainly could do. So I appreciate that the Minister has indicated that this is something we can do.

Is the Minister making a commitment to do some of that work and to provide some of these resources? Can...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are addressed to the Minister of Justice. I’d like to follow up on my statement and ask him a few questions about whether or not we can do something about providing will and estate planning for our residents. I know it will take some time to establish a program, but in the meantime there are certainly some tools that are available to our residents, or could be available to help our residents.

I refer the Minister to the GNWT public trustee web page. It’s under the Department of Justice and it states: “The public trustee is independent from the Department of...

Mr. Chair, I move that we report progress.

---Carried

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Seeing the clock, I move that we report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That’s all.

Okay, so I am presuming all 10 of those positions are not in this section because we get five more in active positions in two pages later on. Are some of those in another section? Thank you.

I’m sorry. I didn’t hear the answer. Could the Minister repeat it, please?

Sorry, Mr. Chair, I couldn’t get back to page 9 quick enough. Could we revert to page 9?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. Yes, I figured that you really weren’t going to give me an answer right now, but I appreciate that you will come back to me at some point in time and advise when I might be able to expect this kind of a program.

I imagine the Minister doesn’t have this information with him, but I’ll ask the question anyway and he can hopefully get back to me. Do we have any idea of what the average cost is to the government when somebody dies intestate? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that and I appreciate his commitment to get the information. I do appreciate the fact that the government has a community outreach lawyer, but when a community outreach lawyer goes to a community, they aren’t just dealing with wills and estates. They are dealing with any legal service that a resident in a community needs and I think we need to specifically target will and estate planning. In the end, we will be saving money because the office of the public trustee will not be dealing with people who die intestate.

I’d like to know from the Minister if he would...