R.J. Simpson

Madam Speaker, I wish to present to the House Bill 65, Builder's Lien Act, to be read for the first time. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So there is a regulatory process, and the City of Yellowknife it is their regulatory process. And so officials are meeting with the officials from ECE are meeting with the officials from the City of Yellowknife to get an understanding of what that process is and the timelines involved with that. But it is through that process that the issues of traffic flow and things like that can be dealt with. And the college wants to be a good neighbour to all of the residents in the area. I can assure you of that. And we don't want to create a situation where there is, you know...

Thank you. So as I've stated, we did we have shared the details. The department is now working with education bodies to come up with the specifics, and you know, what the wording might look like, and then that information will be shared. I've already made that commitment. So that will be done.

And in terms of how we're going to ensure that we work together, I answer that already with discussion about the MOU.

I hope we don't lose sight of the fact here that generally what happens with the nonland and resources legislation, as required under devolution, most legislation is not codeveloped with...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So the changes that are being proposed, which have been shared with Indigenous governments and education bodies, were chosen because of the recommendations of the Office of the Auditor General, internal evaluations that ECE did, and discussions with education bodies. These are many of these are longstanding issues that, you know, we have an opportunity to clean up. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. And we won't be implementing a guaranteed basic income during the life of this Assembly. We do have a number of very expensive initiatives that we are currently working on and will be bringing forward. So we are making investments in this area, making investments to reduce the cost of living. But a guaranteed basic income is not one of those. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I can't commit to that. I know there are organizations who do look at the living wage in different communities, and we're going to let them continue to do that good work. Thank you.

Thank you. And since we've made the changes to the Aurora College Act, I can't speak for the college, but we are working closely together so I can say that the college is open to working with community partners. There is a Makerspace up in Inuvik, and that is part of the college already. And so if there are other opportunities to work with third parties and their synergies, if there's space required and the college has that space, I know that they would be happy to make those connections when it makes sense. We all need to work together and pool our resources. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. And one of the goals that we set out with this transformation was to ensure that the college had a presence in every single community in the Northwest Territories. And that's not the case right now. What that presence looks like, that is what is being worked out. In a perfect world, there would be a physical space with appropriate internet connections and whatnot in every community, but this is a massive project and we're looking at improvements to the three campuses as well as a number of community learning centres. So it's not likely that every community will have a...

Madam Speaker, I wish to present to the House Bill 63, An Act to Amend the Official Languages Act, to be read for the first time. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So I think I've laid that vision out. If Indigenous governments were left out of the modernization of the Education Act, it would be a disaster. So that's why we are making these targeted operational technical amendments in the life of this Assembly, and then we'll deal with the other 99.999 percent of the Education Act in the next Assembly. And the work to begin developing an MOU between the GNWT and Indigenous governments is going to happen in the life of this Assembly. So we should have a signed MOU that will ensure that this work does happen. Thank you.