Kieron Testart

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that Bill 29, an Act to Amend the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, be deemed ready for third reading as amended. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that Clause 17 of Bill 29 be amended by deleting "proposed clause to 24.1" and substituting the following:

"24.1(1) subject to subsection (2), the head of a public body shall refuse to disclose to an applicant labour relations information

the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to reveal information supplied to, or the report of, an arbitrator, mediator, labour relations officer, or other person or body appointed to resolve or inquire into a labour relations matter, including information or records prepared by or for the public body in contemplation of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that I have spoken at length about the importance of this bill, and I will refer interested viewers back to those previous comments. It is great legislation, and the one thing that I will say is that the collaboration with the Minister's office was greatly appreciated. We have achieved consensus on every issue brought forward by committee, and it has greatly improved the bill and shown just how effective this legislature can be when it puts its mind to collaborating on legislation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As noted in our report on page 10, the inclusion of local housing associations is something that the committee identified as a concern. However, as with any clause-by-clause review of legislation, the committee's role is to determine how best to address that concern. In this case, committee felt that amendment to the law would be inconsistent with how the legislation operates to be inclusive of government agencies or public bodies. That is through regulations. The committee felt that the best way to address this concern of ensuring that local housing associations are...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In virtually every community organization that came forward, including the first responders who worked in emergency services in the communities which the committee consulted, the number one concern was ensuring that -- sorry, I'm getting confused with other consultations, because we've been doing so many of them. Sorry, Mr. Chair.

In all the community governments we spoke to, including representatives from the Northwest Territories Association of Communities, the concern has been that a new access regime that applies to municipalities will bring with it additional...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak to the committee's report. I am not going to speak at length, as we read the full contents of the report into the record yesterday, and I believe that that took approximately an hour and a half, because it is, to my understanding, the third-longest report that has been produced by a committee, in the history of this sitting, at least.

It shows the tremendous amount of work that the committee did, putting together their review of Bill 29. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the very hard work that staff, both committee staff and the staff of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Reflecting on some other commentary that has been made, I think junior kindergarten is a good idea, but the devil is always in the details. One of the unintended consequences of the program has been making the private daycare industry basically untenable from a revenue standpoint and pricing private spaces out of the market. We have dealt with that in this Assembly very recently, and it was not a straightforward solution.

Given that, given that there is going to be an ever-increasing need for daycare when the Minister has said earlier that parents in Yellowknife understand...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister. The final recommendation I might propose, and I am wondering if the Minister would take this up, is to form some sort of mental health advisory body specifically for youth mental health and specifically representative or made up of youth from across the territory. Can the Minister work to establish some sort of advisory body to inform the department's operations? Clearly, they have a lot of good stuff going on. It's just not getting to the target audience, so I think having a body like that, made up of young people, would greatly enhance the...

That's great news, and I think that this is a really key initiative that young people are speaking out and speaking up on, and that's why we need to really pay attention to it. It sounds like we're making good progress.

They also brought forward the need for online mental health resources for youth to be made available, including online peer support and anonymous counselling options. In many ways, young people want to engage through mobile devices or by keeping their identity somewhat depersonalized. Does the department offer these services, or are these services offered in schools or some...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. I will finish off the end of the report once I find the page. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Clause 5 of Bill 29 proposes to amend the deadline for a public body to respond to an access request from 30 calendar days to 20 business days. Under subsection 11(1), the act allows a public body to extend this initial deadline "for a reasonable period." Clause 6 of the bill changes strikes out "for a reasonable period" and substitutes "for a period not exceeding 20 business days," placing a hard deadline on the extension a public body may grant itself. The...