R.J. Simpson

Thank you. First, I want to apologize to Mr. Patzer, whose name escaped me. He is probably the first person in the Department of Justice that I met, about six years ago, so my apologies on that one. This bill, it's also important because we are in a situation where, for a lawyer to come up to the territory, they would have to self-isolate for two weeks. We are in a situation where there is a backup of cases, and we need this service. I thank the committee for working with the department to move this along. Thank you.

There is a plan. I think it's too big to talk about right now because it starts when children first enter school. I was looking just a few minutes ago at a framework or a strategy from 2010, when the Member for Monfwi was the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I am happy to say that a lot of the actions identified in there are things that have now been completed; there is progress being made. Just the other day, I released or officially launched the Our Languages curriculum, so now, there is a curriculum, a solid curriculum, in schools, that can be implemented across the territory...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, we have Mr. Mike Reddy, director of legislation. [Microphone turned off]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There is currently no accreditation body in the territory for accrediting translators. I have a list of translators here who the department uses. I think there are 33 names on there. I think 16 of them have interpreter/translator certificates from bodies like Aurora College, and a number also have qualifications in linguistics and things like that. I don't say it enough, but I do want to take this opportunity to thank the translators. I stand in the House, and I listen. Sometimes, I do not know what Members are saying, but the translators have to listen to that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am here today to present Bill 18, An Act to Amend the Legal Profession Act. I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight for their review and to Members for supporting the expedited consideration of this bill. The purpose of Bill 18 is to remove the requirement that an applicant for admission as a member of the NWT Law Society must be physically present in the NWT to take and sign the oath or affirmation before a judge that is required before engaging in the practice of law in the NWT.

This amendment is expected to remove unnecessary costs...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ATIPP Act, yes, we were hoping that implementation would be speedier, but there have been significant staffing challenges. We are hoping to bring the act into force in spring of 2021. Recently, we did bring Section 61.1 into force to allow for the access and privacy into force to allow for the access and privacy staff to act as ATIPP coordinators for other public bodies. The staff within the Department of Justice are currently examining the fees, and we hope to have the regulations in place to have those reductions that the Member was speaking of by December.

We...

I am willing to work with them. There is already a lot of work going on between the Housing Corporation and ECE to try to figure out how can we leverage the journeypersons who work at the Housing Corporation with the LHOs across the territory. That type of work is ongoing. I'm not sure about mandating. I think that we could probably get there by cooperating. We can use a carrot instead of a stick in this situation.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The trades curriculum is based on nationally approved trades standards, so there is not a lot of wiggle room in there to develop our own if we want our journeypersons to be certified across Canada. We do have one trades program that is not national, that is unique to the territory. That is the housing maintainer program. That is one that is currently under review and being updated in a way the Member is referencing. I also want to point out that, with the transformation to a polytechnic university, there are opportunities for research and trades-related research...

As the committee is aware, we are taking a lessons-learned approach, so we're looking at what have we learned over this last little while and moving forward. What do we need to do with the legislation? In some instances, it was clear. For example, with employment standards, there were some changes that were required in order to allow people to access federal benefits. Those ones are quite easy, but I don't have a comprehensive list of what changes departments have identified to date. That work is being undertaken right now, and at some point in the future, we will have that sort of lessons...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Each department is responsible for following the laws of the territory, and I haven't been keeping track of which departments have used this. It's not something that centrally comes to me. I can check to see. I can say from my own departments, neither Justice nor ECE has used this, although I know that there are plans at ECE to use this. Thank you, Madam Speaker.