Shauna Morgan

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and to my colleague.

The Standing Committee on Social Development recommends the Government of the Northwest Territories sign Memorandums of Understanding with Indigenous Governments who have settled land claims with land use policies to encourage housing development.

The Standing Committee on Social Development recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories develop policies that improve coordination between Housing NWT and other GNWT departments to remove barriers to housing development. This includes urgently increasing the supply of land suitable for...

I'll just leave it by saying I also want to follow up with the Minister and the Minister of health in looking into what future capabilities that the med-response system could have. I know when it was first announced several Assemblies ago, the intention was for it to -- you know, that was the first phase, and then it was going to expand and have more and more capabilities. And I don't see that that's happened. So this technology change might be an opportunity to investigate how the capability of the med-response system could be sort of made more sophisticated and more helpful in terms of what...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, this poses a bit of a mystery to me that perhaps I can follow up on later because I do know for a fact that 9-1-1 launched in November 2019, and so I can't quite figure out why we would have launched using a system that was already 5 to 10 years old. Anyway, I do hope that going forward we are making a wise investment in technology that we have some assurance will last more than five years so we won't be back here again.

With this opportunity to sort of reboot the system, to use a very poor technology pun because I know very little about technology, are there -- in...

Thank you, Madam Chair. That's fair enough. I mean, my priority here is that we get into a habit of having enough in our capital budget that actually addresses the urgent needs in our various education facilities. And it is concerning to me when I hear the Minister say that, you know, only 30 percent of the asks that came forward this year are being funded. And I don't know if all of those asks are -- you know, how serious the structural issues or repairs needed to the schools are or if it's, you know, gosh, we wish we had this extra function in the school, you know, and how those things are...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I certainly do appreciate that commitment to do those assessments for the Yellowknife schools that, you know, are overdue on their regular assessments. But could the Minister or her staff explain what is the expected cadence? There was a reference to every five years. Is that generally happening? And, also, I wanted to clarify, we've been talking about assessments. My understanding is that there might be different levels of assessments. There might be a sort of a routine assessment, assuming that things are probably fine, but just sort of to do a look over, and then...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I just wanted to ask, on page 21, when we look at the 2025-2026 Capital Estimates and then the revised estimates, it was -- the approved estimate was $2.3 million and then the revised estimates ended up being $37.2 million, and I wonder if the Minister can just explain how we got such a huge jump last year. I know there was overruns and extra costs in relation to the Mangilaluk School in Tuktoyaktuk. But does that account for all of that jump; can the Minister explain. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So given that -- certainly by talking to residents, you can understand their experiences but they may not understand the why of different things that may happen to them in the healthcare system, and some of these why answers could only come from talking to the practitioners. Will this process/investigation that's happening involve interviewing and talking to the practitioners at every stage of the journey to understand some of the whys as to what is happening to patients along the way? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at this point in session, many of us start to feel that we're losing our minds, so I thought it would be a good day to speak about mental health with a focus on our young people.

We hear from our education authorities, teachers and parents, that the mental health needs of youth have never been more challenging, both the severity of the problems and the types of issues:

Self-harm,

Depression,

Eating disorders,

Those struggling with loneliness and bullying and trauma.

Just over two years ago, the number of child and youth counsellors was reduced by about half and...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My first question is about the Taltson pre-construction planning. So the Minister said that they're hoping that they would be at the beginning of an environmental assessment stage by the end of 2026-2027. So that would imply that, you know, you would have sort of terms of reference or be moving towards a report that you can make public. So keeping in mind that this is for the next three years, but at what point in the next three years or at what point in the process will the public be able to see, well, first the estimated cost of this project and the business case being...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I definitely want to thank the other committee members and Minister and his staff and all of the members of the public who helped give us insights and advice on this bill. And I do think we ended up making some positive changes and we have a bill that is going to make some positive changes in terms of addressing family violence.

I just wanted to note, this came up again and again with some of our witnesses, this bill itself, and certainly the Protection Against Family Violence Act, can only tackle a small part of all of the work that needs to be done to address family...