Kieron Testart

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your Standing Committee on Government Operations is pleased to provide its Report on the Review of Bill 29: An Act to Amend the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and commends it to the House.

The Standing Committee on Government Operations ("the committee") is pleased to report on its review of Bill 29: An Act to Amend the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act or ATIPP Act.

Bill 29: An Act to Amend the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act was sponsored by the Department of Justice and has been referred to the Standing...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Reflecting on some other commentary that has been made, I think junior kindergarten is a good idea, but the devil is always in the details. One of the unintended consequences of the program has been making the private daycare industry basically untenable from a revenue standpoint and pricing private spaces out of the market. We have dealt with that in this Assembly very recently, and it was not a straightforward solution.

Given that, given that there is going to be an ever-increasing need for daycare when the Minister has said earlier that parents in Yellowknife understand...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister. The final recommendation I might propose, and I am wondering if the Minister would take this up, is to form some sort of mental health advisory body specifically for youth mental health and specifically representative or made up of youth from across the territory. Can the Minister work to establish some sort of advisory body to inform the department's operations? Clearly, they have a lot of good stuff going on. It's just not getting to the target audience, so I think having a body like that, made up of young people, would greatly enhance the...

That's great news, and I think that this is a really key initiative that young people are speaking out and speaking up on, and that's why we need to really pay attention to it. It sounds like we're making good progress.

They also brought forward the need for online mental health resources for youth to be made available, including online peer support and anonymous counselling options. In many ways, young people want to engage through mobile devices or by keeping their identity somewhat depersonalized. Does the department offer these services, or are these services offered in schools or some...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. I will finish off the end of the report once I find the page. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Clause 5 of Bill 29 proposes to amend the deadline for a public body to respond to an access request from 30 calendar days to 20 business days. Under subsection 11(1), the act allows a public body to extend this initial deadline "for a reasonable period." Clause 6 of the bill changes strikes out "for a reasonable period" and substitutes "for a period not exceeding 20 business days," placing a hard deadline on the extension a public body may grant itself. The...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier this month, youth from across the territory came together here in the Chamber for the annual Youth Parliament. Model parliaments such as the one recently hosted by this Legislative Assembly are incredibly important in not only ensuring continued democratic participation of future generations, but as also integral to passing on the knowledge of how our system works to the next generation of leaders.

Our young parliamentarians showed us that they already have a strong grasp of the issues which face our territory today and made compelling arguments for increasing...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This amendment is similar to Nunavut's section 9 of their legislation to address information-sharing with other organizations. It would ensure that any ownership and exclusive rights issues to the information that we share must be addressed by the terms of the agreement to the satisfaction of the Minister. This would, in effect, ensure that Indigenous organizations and governments and other third parties, including NGOs, private corporations, et cetera, could place conditions into information-sharing agreements that protect their ownership of the data. Without this...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to comment on the importance of this piece of legislation. The work of the Statistics Bureau is crucial to building the evidence required to make sound public policy decisions in both the Northwest Territories and Canada, as our statistics are able to be shared. That helps us, especially as lawmakers, to better understand what's happening in our territory and how our decisions are influencing the economy, poverty, the health and wellness of our citizens. Having a sound legislative framework for the work of the statistics bureau is crucial to this initiative...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Honourable Premier. That is good news, and I look forward to seeing the results of that finding. I still think that we have undertaken a process, and I do not think it's premature to start developing policy around that process that is already under way.

My final question is: many of the IGOs, Indigenous government organizations, that participated in this process shared with the standing committee that, for their engagement to be meaningful, they need to have the capacity to actually engage the legislation that is before them. In many cases, they did not...

Perhaps my desire was for a more technical response, but that is a fair point. We do need to work together on this, and we do need to understand the flow of legislation, especially when we have Indigenous governments partnering on this legislation. Many of those governments have come before standing committee in our review of some of these laws and have asked to continue their collaborative role in co-drafting not only the bills, but the regulations arising from these new acts, should they pass. My understanding is that some departments have reached out and started this work of the terms of...