Jay Macdonald

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, today I have with me Brian Asmundson, acting director of legal registries with the Department of Justice. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm here today to present Bill 18, An Act to Amend the Partnership and Business Names Act.

Bill 18 will address an error made during amendments to the Partnership and Business Names Act in 2015 stating that a suspension of registrations is required while a registration is under review. This was not the intent of the change from 2015. Instead of stating that a decision is stayed, the legislation should say that a decision is not stayed during the review period to avoid unreasonable and unpredictable delays in registering business names. In addition, Bill 18 makes the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think the Premier has made it very clear in all of our mandate letters that that is certainly a priority and part of how we plan on doing business as a Premier and Cabinet to ensure that we are respecting all of those decisions and applying the appropriate measures. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question. You know, I know this is a very sensitive subject and, you know, the discovery of unmarked graves of former residential students is a deeply sensitive issue that we must approach with respect, dignity, empathy for the Indigenous communities involved and the families. You know, this is an area where, as an Indigenous person, my mother was a residential school survivor, I feel very deeply about this subject, and I am committed to working with everyone involved -- the community, the Member, the department of education, the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, ECC is following the stepped approach outlined in the legislative developmental protocol and that is agreed to with the Intergovernmental Council. There's been several meetings to date. The most recent meeting of the technical working group happened actually earlier this week, and progress is certainly being made.

Now as the Minister of ECC, I can't directly lay out when this is going to be completed. This is a collaborative effort. It involves Indigenous governments, Indigenous organizations, the water boards, etcetera. So, you know, ensuring that we all...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Legal Aid Commission also has other lawyers that provide legal services and advice for folks that, you know, don't have resources or that need support. So this is also part of the outreach and with the intent, you know, is in January of 2025, we made some changes to the schedule to allow the lawyers that are travelling to communities to be available in those communities for longer periods of time, and also went in the direction of trying to make sure that, when possible, we were getting consistent representation, so the same lawyer was going back to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think the department has done a fabulous job of committing to, you know, improving our wildfire preparedness across the NWT.

We've increased human and financial investment. We have the community wildfire resilience contribution program that was launched this year and is offering just under $2 million of additional investment in FireSmart implementation for communities and organizations across the territory. We're actively working with communities to provide preparedness and mitigation training.

Additionally, we've been working closely with the NWT...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question.

You know, I'd like to start off by saying that, you know, it's early days in the season for 2025 and to date, one thing that our ECC staff did is they've already responded to ten fires in the Northwest Territories. And, unfortunately, of those ten fires, nine were human caused. I'm happy to report that all ten have been declared out.

ECC has also done a lot of work in -- that we scanned for holdover fires to ensure that we're able to properly and proactively address those. We have brought our firefighters on earlier and done...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this really does -- this question really speaks to the complexity of SCAN. You know, SCAN did come to this House previously, and I think, you know, as we looked at going through and redoing the SCAN legislation, a big part of that was ensuring that, you know, there was a detailed policy and legal analysis done to ensure that, you know, what was brought forward is appropriate for the NWT, it was sound legally, and in line with our jurisdictional best practices, you know. And certainly looking at the Yukon Supreme Court decision on how that would potentially...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I previously said, a lot of work is already started on this initiative and just prior to coming into the sitting today, I did have my staff reach out to the Department of Justice and ask them to provide me with an update on how quickly we could advance these three pieces of legislations quicker than the planned accelerated timeline that I spoke to yesterday. So happy to share that information with the House as soon as it's available. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.