Kieron Testart

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So support to northern performers, I note that this funding, I'm assuming, is sunsetting. I think having a touring grant or something along those lines that let's northern artists reside in the north but it gives them support to travel elsewhere is an important aspect of arts funding that is often overlooked. Is that something that we can  and I note that the line here says that it's going to be redirected towards new programs that will better support the creative sector. So is that in line? Are we going to find a way to support touring artists? Thank...

Thank you. Yeah, if that comes up during this thing, just feel free to shout it out and I'll write it down. But I think that could potentially give us a sense of where we're at.

So another concern I've heard is from day home providers is that the ratios could be tweaked to allow for more spaces, especially in the transition between infants to, like, child where there's a different ratio at play. And if we created a different space or a different child to caregiver ratio, we could expand that a little bit and create less headaches for parents and improve the overall spaces without overburdening...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I said in my Member's statement, violent crime in the Northwest Territories is on the rise as is drug crime. Drug seizures are up a hundred percent, I believe, and homicides are up more so than that. This use when I was growing up here, this was a very peaceful place. You know, we didn't see anything like this at the scale that it's happening now. Does the Premier agree that this is a crisis that needs to be resolved? Thank you.

So to be clear, there are  is there an implementation plan, or is this just new policy direction? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And as a parent with young children in care, and I lost care and needed to find new arrangements, I can tell you it's not easy. And anyone who is still on those lists and does not have care, I have so much sympathy for. You know, it feels like smuggling narcotics, you know, like, flying under the radar to try to get access somewhere because there's so few spaces. So my concern is we can say 75 new spaces across you know, and that's great we're creating new spaces, but if the total need is 7500, then this is nothing, right, in the grand scheme of things...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It was stated by members of the public at a public meeting that the urgency of finding missing people is more important to their community than the protection of someone’s privacy. There was no concerns on the privacy of missing persons, as long as common sense was considered when taking into account the protection of someone’s privacy.

Committee received a recommendation to add third party consent clauses to the legislation, similar to British Columbia’s Missing Persons Act. This clause requires the police to gain third party consent first before proceeding with a record...

Okay, so it's so $2.5 million would be the entire program with the 2200 people added? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And if I could just squeeze in one quick question, I would like to hear from the deputy minister just to get the perspective of the actual department. I appreciate what the Minister's background comes from, but I would appreciate hearing from the deputy minister on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, let's talk about what we're talking about. We're not talking about stopping the change to the beneficiaries. We're talking about scrapping the income testing. That's the issue that has been raised, or that's the request. It's not an all or nothing. If it was all or nothing, we would just delete this and the government would have to come up with a new proposal. So how would that affect this appropriation? If we scrap income testing, we add the 2200 people the Minister spoke of because I think those I firmly believe those people need care or need access to these...

Thank you. I suppose the question is like, and I appreciate that the apology was forthcoming and it was swift. It still made the news, which no communications professional wants. So I'm just wondering if I know, again, a lot of work has been done in previous years to centralize communications corporate communications, and I have heard anecdotically that perhaps that's that hasn't given departments the kind of capacity they were promised. So how is that working from the perspective of ECE in their communications function? Is the centralize is the shared communications function serving this...