R.J. Simpson

Yes, I do.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And so there is an office in Ottawa that is leased by the GNWT. There has been a position associated with that office. That is proposed as a reduction, that position. But we have a number of years left on that lease. And so we are looking at how to best utilize that space, and there are discussions happening. I know that the space is used by Indigenous governments, by negotiators, by Regular Members. I used the office myself as a Regular Member. So we definitely see the value in it. We want to be able to bring federal Ministers into our space in Ottawa, take them out of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Public Utilities Board is the energy regulator in the Northwest Territories. So if NT Power Corporation wants to increase its prices, it has to make an application to the Public Utilities Board. We have a Minister responsible for the Public Utilities Board, and that is Minister McKay. It is arm's length from government as it is it regulates, you know, government entities. And the budget has remained the same, I believe, for many years. I briefly held this portfolio about four years ago, and the budget is relatively similar to what it was then. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And there were it took time to ramp up the program. There was a requirement to find people, to train people, and that's not always a quick task. And so it didn't move as quickly as we would have hoped. Maybe the deputy minister has more information on that. I can hand it to her, maybe not, but we'll try. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe there are seven panel lawyers who are regularly assigned files by the children's lawyer. So that's just within the territory and those are just the panel lawyers. And I'm not sure how many other lawyers in the territory also have expertise in that area. Thank you.

Thank you. And there are some promising tables. Hope to see some things settled during this government. I don't really want to get into specifics. As they are in negotiations, I don't want to poison the well as they say, but and the thing about negotiations that I've learned is sometimes you start a term and the ones you're furthest ahead on are the ones you're the furthest behind on at the end of the term. And it's things that are completely out of our control. An Indigenous government might want to just take some more time at that particular point in the process, and we have to sit there...

Thank you. Yes, there is a budget for it. I believe the budget has been shared with Members, and if not I can do that. And it is under corporate communications. But I would like to hand it to the director for more information. Thank you.

Thank you. That's correct. Often there's work that needs to be done to get a program going and so the agreements with the federal government accounted for that, and then the ongoing funding is more reflective of the ongoing needs. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The manual needs to be updated as new there's new developments in best practices and case law and things like that. And so in the future, it's possible that the those roles will be done by other members of the other lawyers in the Legal Aid Commission. We do have a number of lawyers who specialize in family law who deal with children's law. There's opportunities for those staff to have professional development opportunities to learn more about children's law. I'm sure they get notifications in their inbox when there are significant cases that impact the world of...

Thank you. I would be more than happy to brief the committee. Thank you.