Julie Green

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. He appeared at the Standing Committee on Social Development last winter to talk about the 2015-2016 audit of Child and Family Services. He provided as a follow-up, a report on the audit, but not the audit themselves. Why wasn't the audit given to us in the original form? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The effect of this motion is to make the wording in this particular bullet more specific since the mandate was passed in March of last year. There have been two roundtables convened, and there has been some progress in identifying performance measures for reducing poverty. It is my understanding that at the next roundtable in November, there will be a type of report available to participants that will show what progress has been made on these indicators. This is one area where fighting poverty is something that we all aspire to, but making progress is something that we...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in March of 2015, the Office of the Auditor General released its audit of child and family services in the NWT as set out in the Child and Family Services Act. The auditor found both departmental and regional action on child protection wanting. Let us take a step back and remind ourselves why we are talking about protection services for children. They are, of course, the most vulnerable members of society. While most children are born into families that are able to meet their needs, some are not. Some families are dysfunctional because of addictions, violence...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, our original mandate document called on the government to create a plan to provide for universal child care in the Northwest Territories. The intention there was not necessarily to look for the funding to implement universal child care within the life of this Assembly, but to ensure that there was a plan in place in the event that there was money available to implement universal child care. As it turns out, the new federal government does have money to create 40,000 new spaces for child care in Canada over the next ten years. What we need is a plan so that when...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the effect of this motion is to put the content of a motion that we passed in this House on June 2016 into this mandate. At that time, we voted unanimously to address the long-standing issue of the shortage of safe, affordable housing in the Northwest Territories. This was something that we did after the original mandate document was created. We are catching up now by putting this motion in.

What we know about core housing need in the NWT is that there are about 15,000 households in the NWT, and approximately 20 per cent of those households are in core housing...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this follows on from the previous motion where we are trying to strengthen post-secondary education in the Northwest Territories to equip the workforce for coming high-demand occupations. That has already been studied. We know what those occupations are. We just need to make sure that we are in a position to train people to fill them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this represents an expansion of this area to acknowledge that the knowledge economy is an important growth area for the NWT in terms of employment and that we would like to see those opportunities developed by introducing this amendment. Thank you.

I have no further comments on this. Could you advise how we are going to review this document? Is it going to be page-by-page or in another way? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I think that the Minister can get that information from the department. It was obtained through access to information by media and reported this morning. One of the end results of the conversation last winter was that there would be this new audit tool which the Minister has referenced. When will the committee receive the report of Child and Family Services for the 2016-2017 fiscal year; and is there any consideration of making a summary of it public to promote confidence in Child and Family Services? Mahsi.

Thank you for that answer. What kind of reports, audit reports were shared with regional authorities in the 2015-2016 audit?