Wendy Bisaro

Thanks to Mr. Fulford. I think I kind of get it.

The other thing I wanted to ask about is again related to security and deposits and funds that are required. I believe it’s in Section 10. Section 10 allows for deposits for liability related to loss and damage, but deposits are not mandatory. I suspect I know the answer, but I’m going to ask the Premier or Mr. Fulford anyway. Why are we not making these deposits mandatory? It goes to the whole issue again of financial security and the need to have closure and regulation plans and just the whole protection of our environment issue. Thank you.

Thanks to Mr. Fulford. So, I guess it just points out one of the reasons why we need to have public consultation on these acts once they have been approved, and after April 1st. It’s another reason why the government and committee, hopefully, will get together and will provide some opportunity for fairly comprehensive consultation on these acts.

I wanted to ask about royalties. The payment of royalties comes under Section 47, I think, and beyond that as well. Am I correct in understanding that royalties can be exempted basically by the Minister without consultation with other Members and/or the...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Premier initiate a broad and thorough public review of all devolution-related legislation as soon as it is within the jurisdiction of the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Are we doing comments or are we going right to the motion?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to express my appreciation to the mover and the seconder of the motion for bringing it forward, but I, unfortunately, don’t support that particular action.

On Friday I put some queries out on social media, through Facebook and through Twitter, and I asked anybody who saw it, listened, heard it, whatever, I asked them for comments and I asked them for positive or negative comments. I didn’t care; I just wanted comments because I felt it very important that we get some kind of feedback.

I had considerable input from my constituents and from other people’s...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is unfortunate that most of the bills required to implement devolution – including the most complex and important legislation – could not be reviewed by the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning due to time constraints. Among these bills are the Northwest Territories Lands Act, the Waters Act, two bills pertaining to oil and gas regulation, and two bills to implement GNWT agreements with Aboriginal governments, related to land, water and resource management, and revenue sharing. The latter two bills are brand new, not mirrored federal legislation, stemming...

Thanks. I’m not quite understanding why the Minister doesn’t really know what these initiatives are at this point. The budget for 2014-15 has been passed. Presumably there’s planning in that budget under the Department of Education, Culture and Employment for new initiatives for the fall of 2014, September, for schools, for new things.

Can the Minister tell me what is in the 2014-15 Education budget that they are planning on implementing and that those changes are going to be coming in under the Education Renewal Innovation Initiative? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do have some questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I’d like to follow up a little bit with regard to my statement. One of the things that add to teachers’ workload is new initiatives and changes made to curriculum, changes made to the way that they are expected to report things, changes made with the way that they’re expected to deal with students in the classroom and in the school.

I’d like to ask the Minister, right now the department is undergoing or has posted an Education Renewal and Innovation Strategy and they’re working on an action...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week the Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association released a pan-northern study on teacher workload, entitled “Understanding Teacher Workloads.”

It is significant to me that the findings from this study are consistent with national and international research. In fact, across many sectors in North America, overwork is a growing problem marked by work intensification. This report’s findings show that although NWT teachers love their jobs and their students, they are burning themselves out, trying to deliver a quality product within a system that is not supporting...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I just thought there might be some Members who might like to make a few comments on the process and so on.

The report lays out pretty well, I think, and in a fair bit of detail the process we had to follow. Bills 1, 2 and 3 followed our normal process. They were read in the House to second reading and then referred to committee, and committee held a public hearing and asked for comment from the public, then held a public hearing and then reported it back to the House as ready for third reading.

But the other seven bills, the process has been kind of hijacked, I guess, is...