Julian Morse

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, recently, all outpatient laboratory services in Yellowknife have been moved to the Stanton Hospital. Along with this change, came a new protocol for accessing lab work. Mr. Speaker, a constituent of mine visited the hospital to try this new process and didn't have the most positive experience.

They first tried the method of just showing up at the lab as suggested on the website. They were told that this was not actually an option, and they had to call to book an appointment or come back the next day for a same-day appointment. They called and were told the...

I was just saying we're going to direct the emergency organization to do these plans on behalf of. It'll simply give communities the option. I think we need to be careful not to take autonomy away from our communities when we're passing motions such as this so that we ensure that our communities still hold their decision-making authority. So in the words -- I'll just quote the Mayor Alty of city of Yellowknife on this one.

As a policy principle, I don't want to regress into the time when the GNWT came in and did everything for communities and we didn't have a say. We are an order of government...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I certainly won't need 20 minutes to speak on this one. I am supportive of the -- similar to kind of some previous speakers, I'm supportive of the general intent of this motion though I don't think the details, implications, and a full understanding of how it can be successfully implemented have been thought out at this time. However, I would note that there are several models already being implemented in neighboring jurisdictions so we can learn from and borrow from their experience.

Mr. Speaker, the Yukon has a program like this. There's programs in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I just want to speak to this one shortly. I think, you know, just when bringing motions forward, I think sometimes the desire to get ideas onto the floor gets ahead of the work needed to fully assess the problem, engage with those affected by it, and hear their needs, and work through the necessary and often difficult process of figuring out the most effective way to address those needs. I don't believe that responsibility lies solely on the shoulders of Cabinet. We do have tools at our disposal on the Regular side. We have our committees. We have an...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a friendly amendment to bring forward for this, which I'll speak to after reading the motion into the record.

I move, seconded by the Member for Great Slave, that Motion 35-20(1), Emergency Plan Support for Municipalities and Community Governments, be amended by replacing the word "direct" with the word "offer", adding "'s" to the word "organization", followed by adding the word "assistance", and adding "in need of assistance" after the words "Northwest Territories community" in the ninth paragraph of the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to highlight a recent report by Greenland's Economic Council on the current state of Greenland's economy and recommendations related to economic transition and sustainability. I want to highlight this report as it relates to ECE's business plan goal of developing an economic vision for the NWT. There are some interesting parallels with what is highlighted in the Greenland report in our own economic situation.

The first aspect of the report I want to draw attention to is related to how the government can best strengthen productivity in the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's it for me on this page.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And the Minister and her staff are making me quite the happy Member this afternoon. I'm very happy to see these increases to funding, very happy to hear answers about fast tracking our needs assessments. I think this is great to see. So appreciate the work they're doing on this. Of course, I'll always support more funding towards these programs. I would happily support supps coming in from the Minister when they receive more funding for programs like this because they are really crucial to getting people into housing in our communities. So thank you very much. Those are...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're moving so quickly here, I think there's probably a few of us that have some questions on these but you're just getting ahead of us there. Though I do appreciate you running a tight ship.

On the Housing First programming, when I was serving on the Yellowknife Housing Authority previous to taking on this role, we were hearing a lot of concerns from folks in public housing who were sharing space with Housing First program, that the kind of mixed use of the building was causing a lot of problems for people, you know, people who are trying to raise young children in the...

Okay, thank you very much to the Minister for that. I really appreciate the additional emphasis on timeline for that. I think that document is going to be crucial for us kind of determining the need, quantifying the problem.

Continuing on with that along that thread, there's the needs assessment for new stock and then there's what we already have. So I was pleased to see in the business plan, page 255, develop an updated infrastructure deficit assessment for Housing NWT's owned residential assets to identify current and longterm capital investment needs. So the target is that we're going to...