R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Cabinet has serious concerns about what is proposed by this bill. If Bill 23 were to become law, it would essentially create a right to receive power while removing the obligation to pay for it. This would have a number of negative impacts on our residents. We would undoubtedly see some customers become burdened with large and perpetually growing debts, and as a consequence, the power companies would see their uncollectible debts grow. This isn't just speculation. We saw it happen last year when NTPC paused collections, ceased disconnections, and removed load limiters...

Thank you. If Alberta is not on the same page, I wouldn't be in favour of it, either. The reason that we are doing this now is because we don't want to be in a scenario where we are told in the middle of summer that Alberta is getting rid of their Daylight Saving Time and we don't have the ability to be responsive and now we are out of sync for however long it takes to get a legislative proposal together, send it to the committee, get it back from the committee, draft legislation, bring it to the House, give the committee 120 days to look at it, bring it back to a sitting, and then go from...

There may be 2,360 people accessing the Wage Top-Up program. That doesn't mean there're 2,360 people making minimum wage once that program goes away.

Those are two different numbers. One is $18, and one is right now $13.46; there's a difference there. What do we have in place, Mr. Speaker? That's why I work so hard on education. That's why we're working hard on making investments in early childhood. That's why we're trying to expand the number of early childhood spaces there are for children so that they can get in there and get an enriched environment starting at the beginning of their life.

T...

Thank you, Madam Chair. There is a significant amount of research about the effects of Daylight Saving Time. There's anecdotal evidence about Daylight Saving Time. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone here say they like it. Barring some evidence that I can't foresee coming forward, I expect that we would be in sync with Alberta. The reason the legislation is as it is is because we want to be very nimble and not make the change anticipating that Alberta will make a change, and then Alberta doesn't make a change. That scenario has happened in other jurisdictions before, and we don't want that...

The committee made three recommendations, as was asked for. One of the recommendations is always the status quo; one of the recommendations was also increasing it to $15.20.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to be clear, I wouldn't change the time all willy-nilly with this "blank cheque," as the Member calls it. It's not like I want to leave work early, so I'm going to change the time so now it's time to go home. The only prudent thing to do, really, is to ensure that we are aligned with Alberta. That being said, there is a requirement in this bill for some sort of a public consultation. I envision that as an email address that the public can send their concerns to. Thank you.

We cannot do this alone. We are so early on in this, we have not reached out to the education bodies yet, to the Indigenous bodies, anything like that, so we are starting that process now. We have done a lot of the leg work, but there is still much more to do. The decision would come in the summer at the earliest, and if we were to adopt a new curriculum, it would not be rolling out until 2022. Thank you.

Yes. If there's a witness in that room, I'd like to bring them into the Chamber.

As I stated, we are always looking at our curriculum, always looking at what is new. There're people in the department who, this is their job. They focus on curriculum. As I said, given the Office of the Auditor General results as well as our own results as well as the fact that we know we need to do better, we wanted to look and see if, perhaps, adjusting our curriculum is a way to do that. There're a lot of options. Looking forward, we could stay with Alberta's new curriculum. We could create a partnership with another jurisdiction. We could, perhaps, use K to eight of one jurisdiction and...

Thank you. I'd like to introduce Matthew Yap, superintendent of securities, and Cherie Jarock, legislative counsel, and they would be happy to answer any questions Members may have about this topic. Thank you.