R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am here today to present Bill 41: The Justice Administration Statutes Amendment Act.

Bill 41 is an omnibus bill and yes, we do have omnibus bills in this Assembly that advances amendments to three pieces of legislation:

The Jury Act;

The Summary Conviction Procedures Act; and

The Partnership and Business Names Act.

This approach was taken to streamline the process for advancing these three relatively minor amendments in a more efficient manner.

The changes being proposed for the Jury Act will ensure that territorial legislation regarding jury qualification standards...

I'd like to recognize my mother Betty Lyons and my sister, and middle child Chelsea Simpson.

Yes, I would.

In favour.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document: Plain Language Summary for Bill 48: Arbitration Act. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I agree, we need to grow our population. We need to increase the number of qualified professionals we have here in the territory. And that is why myself and the Minister of ITI have spoken about the immigration file and how we can better combine our efforts. And perhaps that is looking at amalgamating our resources and using them more efficiently. But there is I can assure the Member that while I can't just say yes to everything that she asked, I can say that this is a we do have a renewed focus on this, and we are moving in the direction that the Member would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We're not looking to do something like that right now; however, I will say that I have been involved in meetings with all of the ministers of education from across Canada, and we talk about these exact type of things. So I definitely see the value in it.

And I think that as a government, we have to choose what our focuses are, and we can't do everything. We don't invest as much money in immigration as places like the Yukon do. I'm not sure what their budget is, but I know that it is more, and they have more employers, and they can put more emphasis on this.

And so in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And those conversations have begun. I will say that that the pandemic has done a couple things. It has really shifted the focus from immigration because no one was coming in for a couple years. So there was very limited thought about travel. But it also highlighted the labour shortages that we have here in the territory. And I think it's actually refocused us now on the need to improve our immigration services and increase the number of people settling in the territory, bringing their services here.

And so we are looking at making some changes. The program that the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There have been meetings with all the childcare providers, and they have opportunities to ask those questions. You know, these discussions that we're having are great opportunities for us to find out exactly what the issues are and zero in on those.

And so as, you know, the MLAs have brought additional questions and concerns to me, I bring those to the department, and, in turn, the department then brings finds ways to answer those for the programs.

So the best thing to do for a program is to sit down with their early childhood consultant and go over those numbers. And...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So this is something that is ongoing. There are timelines listed in the mandate, and there's funding flowing every single year to the tune of over $4 million to small communities to create jobs. So hundreds of jobs are created each year, and the communities just need to opt in and they can provide those funds to different organizations within the community, even private businesses, to create jobs. We are working on in the coming fiscal year, those are going to turn into multiyear agreements so that communities can plan so there's some sustainability with those jobs. It's...