Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. But I don't know where she's been for the last five years, then, if she says this is the first time she's heard this raised. In fact, I can probably cite where the Minister herself raised this issue in the previous Assembly. But, you know, these offices are found across the country, we're the last jurisdiction without one, and I would like to get a commitment from the Minister that she's actually going to seriously examine this issue of establishing a child and youth advocate for the Northwest Territories. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So, yeah, this talks about this work being done on page 30. Is the current version, does it that's publicly available, does it contain this new tool for the Executive Council and Financial Management Board? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. I'll go back and see what kind of commitment was made by the previous Minister on this topic but that was just disappointing to hear the Minister say this.

So, you know, the department has come up with this quality improvement plan in response to the auditor general's findings, and of course the Minister's just raised that there are consultations going on with Indigenous governments. So can the Minister tell us if the creation of a child and youth advocate is a specific topic of these consultations with Indigenous governments...

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Premier for that. I'll be raising it again in May/June to find out, you know, if we're going to actually move beyond the 30 percent target ourselves. And I've suggested that we need to have at least netzero by 2050, that's the emerging global target if we're going to try to save this planet. But I'll have more questions in May/June then for the Premier and the Minister on this. That's all I have for now. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I’m going to return again to the issue of a child and youth advocate for the Northwest Territories, an issue my colleague from Kam Lake reports has been raised almost 900 times in this House since 2003. I’ve raised it a number of those times, yet we appear to be no further ahead today.

To be clear, a child and youth advocate is an officer established at armslength from the government to ensure that the rights, interests, and viewpoints of children and youth are considered when decisions are made that will affect their wellbeing.

In addition to a general oversight...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Yeah, just I wasn't clear on what the Minister's proposing. Is he can tell me privately what's going on which is you know, maybe I can get more information out of him by wandering down the hall but there's nothing to the public, and I guess that's my concern and issue is what you know, can the Minister work with the council somehow so that people even know who sits on this, what they're doing. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So on February the 9th, 2021, it's over a year ago, the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources announced that the terms of reference for the NWT Climate Change Council were finished. Council seems to have met a few times but I don't even know who sits on the council. There's no web page. There's no nothing in terms of products, communications. Is there actually a climate change council in place? And who sits on it? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. And look, no disrespect to the deputy minister; I know he's very hard working, I just need to get a political commitment from my colleagues across the aisle.

So I'm a bit surprised to hear that nobody really knows if we actually have a formula for calculating this on an annual basis and that it's not reported annually. So my suggestion, recommendation, is that whatever the formula is, that it should be transparent and that it should be recalculated on an annual basis. And I imagine that this is something like, it was done in 2014 with the Northwest Territories Association of...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Well, I'm sure we could clear some of these other items from the agenda. No, more seriously, Mr. Chair, I move that the chair rise and report progress. Mahsi.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Yeah, the first item on page 27 is reduce the funding gap by $5 million. Do we actually have a formula to calculate what the funding gap is at any point in time? Is it transparent? Is it reported annually? Sorry, there's two or three questions there but I'd like to find out more about how this is actually calculated. Thanks, Mr. Chair.