Kieron Testart

Merci, Monsieur le President. [English translation not provided]. The Minister of Education is well aware that the addition of junior kindergarten has added increasing pressure on our schools here in Yellowknife. In my riding of Kam Lake, Ecole St. Joseph is nearing 95 per cent capacity. Yellowknife is currently assessed on the same level as everyone else, but has very different needs. Some of the schools have phantom classrooms, and the entire community is assessed as a whole rather than per district. I would like the Minister to tell me if he is willing to review the assessment for...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I would like to acknowledge the work of the Honourable Members of the Standing Committee on Social Development. They spent a tremendous amount of time making sure this legislation and the public interest, and it was well-represented through their deliberations, and ultimately, through the substantive report that they created and read into the House earlier this week. This act will bring both junior kindergarten into the NWT curriculum, and reduce the number of instructional hours required by law. Those are the most significant portions of it.

It has been a hot topic...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to challenge the statement that has been made by the Minister of Justice that the cannabis legislation as proposed by Ottawa has caught this government by surprise and has not allowed them to do the important work of consulting with our people and developing a legislative framework. I am going to share a timeline with this House. On September 30, 2015, while campaigning during the 2015 federal election before the Liberal party came to power, Justin Trudeau said that his party was committed to legalizing and regulating marijuana. He said controlling it would...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm not sure if the Minister addressed my concerns about working with the community service providers, but I'll leave that alone for now. My final question is the concerns from the department about this program have always been on an administrative basis. I appreciate the program is more flexible, but these admin, and we just heard that the John Howard Society will be administering the program but not actually operating it. They'll be doing that through subcontractors. Why is it the GNWT then not just subcontractors are handling the administration itself? Why do we need...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Does that mean that additional training spaces will be opened up for these counsellors or will they be competing with existing public service employees? I say this because I know some of these training opportunities are quite limited and I'd like the Minister to give a commitment then that the department will make these opportunities available and provide additional resources if required. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Committee would like to consider Minister's Statement 186-18(2); Bill 16: An Act to Amend the Education Act; Committee Report 10-18(2): Report on the Review of Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Education Act, in that order. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. What I hear from the Minister is he has not yet taken a position on that, and I think it is important we get out to the communities. Those discussions have to be carefully crafted so we get good results, and the question we put to our citizens is clear. Apart from those principles, does the Minister have a set of discussion paper around this that he can share with Honourable Members on this side of the House that makes it clear what those questions are going to be that we put to our residents around the important subject of cannabis regulation. Thank you, Mr...

[English translation not provided.] He has laid out clearly what the group has produced to date. How long did it take them to come up with these principles, principles which have basically been around since the 2015 Liberal party platform announcement? There might have been crib from that platform, but I will leave to the Minister to answer. How many times has the working group met? These are well established principles behind this. I'm wondering if they have done anything else. How many times have they met?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate that the Minister is keeping an open mind about this. Back to the initial people who provided the service, the Northern Frontier Visitors Association. They are still on the hook for remediating that site, and there is still a very large cost to demolishing the building, remediating the site, and making sure it can be handed back to the government. There has been no commitment made from the government to support those needs. The honourable Members representing Yellowknife constituencies have made that appeal to the government and asked them to provide...