Kate Reid

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'm sorry if I was not clear. I guess I'm trying to say is do we have any way of measuring the expected workload vis-a-vis the amount of drafters that we have and allocating work appropriately? I'm concerned that while the line item for the legislation division has increased since the 2022-2023 actuals, it hasn't increased since last year. And so I'm just wondering -- yeah, on that idea, like are we -- do we have enough drafters, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm good for now. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think we're both entrenched in our positions. I'll leave it at that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So still on the topic of corrections in Fort Smith but maybe corrections more generally, could the Minister tell me what the drop of inmates is attributable to? I'm asking this because he was the Minister of Justice in the last Assembly and should have a little bit of handle on that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Minister for that explanation. I deeply respect midwifery in both Hay River and Fort Smith as necessary and crucial to those communities; however, the arguments that have been presented to me from midwives here locally is that Yellowknife has a high number of births and the opportunity to be a place where midwives -- Indigenous midwives can learn and seek to become a midwife here in the territory, it's very difficult to get into midwifery school outside of the territory, and to build that capacity up and to cut off the program here at the knees is a...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I want to preface this question with the fact that I've had really good conversations with the Minister on this, and I think where she and I differ on the perspective of this issue is the how, not the why. The why being, of course, that we want to have midwifery services in our smaller communities, especially for our Indigenous folks who are giving birth. So my question, however, is, you know, given that the GNWT has made repeated public commitments to the expansion of midwifery in the NWT, how did it arrive at the decision to discontinue the establishment of midwifery...

So administrative and support services? Some questions, so thank you.

Could the Minister speak to -- I'm noticing here on the lines for both operations expenditures summary and I believe -- maybe I'm mistaken. But anyway, at least in the operations and expenditures summary that the -- yes, so for the line items for administration and information services, the costs have continually gone up from actuals to revised estimates from 2022-2023 and in both cases, in these main estimates, have been brought down again. Can the Minister speak to whether or not she anticipates those costs might go up...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And, again, simply just a strong comment strongly encouraging the Minister to prioritize the timeline of the review to the Act and any possible amendments considering that public safety is a priority of this Assembly, and we hear -- or at least I hear in my constituency, concerns around public safety in rental units. So more of a comment than a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, you know, I kind of took that as an interest on my own accord to go back and look at the annual reports because that was mentioned, I think, in the business plan explicitly. So if you go back to at least the '18, '19 annual report and every one since, the chief rental officer notes that tenants make many inquiries under section 30 of the Act but do not follow through due to likely onerous processes to complete the work of an application. So I would think that additional support for tenants could help alleviate these issues. And so I'd like to ask the Minister if there...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Minister for that. I just -- yeah, the reason I'm highlighting this is because I'm not sure it ever has been highlighted before, and I know I have always been very keen and interested in how quickly the mechanisms of legislation churn out of each Assembly, and I think that there is quite a lot of interest in this side of the House to get things going as soon as possible. So I guess more of a comment than a question, Mr. Chair, is to let the Minister and the department know that we would be super keen to have more French language drafters if that's...