Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Mr. Chair. This is to make sure that family members of a candidate are not eligible to serve as returning officers or additional assistant returning officers to maintain the integrity of the election and so on. That's what these section numbers are really all about, and it comes from a recommendation from the Chief Electoral Officer, so committee thought that this was something they wanted to recommend, as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Elections and Plebiscites Act be amended to prohibit a candidate's polling agent from being able to assist an elector in casting a vote. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. It's tax time again. That's especially important for recipients of Income Assistance, who are required to file tax returns in order to remain eligible. Case officers keep an eye on what tax refunds their clients might be getting. Refunds are considered "unearned income" and the amount of a refund is deducted from the client's monthly amount of income support, even if part of the refund is used to pay off other tax debts. There is an especially cruel twist to this year, thanks to COVID and the federal Canada Emergency Response Benefit, or CERB. When CERB was...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that simultaneous interpretation of committee proceedings into any official language should be made available to Members or witnesses appearing before committee, with a one-week notice; and further, that the availability of this service should be communicated clearly with Members and any witnesses. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Just very briefly, it is hard to believe that Members have the right to use any official language in the House as a result of the Official Languages Act but it is not actually recognized or incorporated into our rules. This will make sure that the rules reflect the law. It is an important motion, and I expect that everybody is going to vote in favour of this. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of things. I neglected to thank the interpreters who do such tremendous work for us here in the Assembly. I have known some of them for many years and have great confidence in their ability to help us understand each other a lot better. I neglected to thank them. I also wanted to thank the Member for Monfwi for bringing this matter forward because I think it is going to push us to the next level in terms of making sure that we properly recognize and implement use of official languages in this Assembly. I think that we have come up with a variety of...

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Minister for that. I appreciate it, and I look forward to hearing what the public has to say in terms of the revenue side of the equation because I just don't think we've paid enough attention to it. I did neglect to mention one other thing. We need a new arrangement with the federal government where we get to keep more of our source revenues. We've got to start to cut those apron strings from Ottawa and find ways to become more self-sufficient, and that, as I said, means a new fiscal arrangement with Ottawa where we get to keep all or a greater portion of...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Those of us who have been around for a while may remember when we used to have a languages bureau. It was quite an operation. There were probably 40, 50 staff there who were available and doing work in all of the official languages and developing curriculum, all kinds of great work. Unfortunately, we do not have that capacity anymore, or it's still there perhaps in different forms. However, that issue was raised with us as well as the need for better interpreter training and accreditation. That was raised to us in the written submissions, verbal submissions, and it was...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I, too, want to extend a lot of thanks to my colleagues on this side of the House for the work that we did together looking at the main estimates. People often just don't know how much work goes on behind the scenes here. We don't really do a very good job explaining this, but we met and reviewed the main estimates department by department with Ministers and their staff over a period of a couple of weeks. Then we had to work together as regular MLAs to figure out what we thought was missing or could be improved in the budget. There is an immense amount of work that goes on...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. What I'm trying to reconcile is: clearly corporate income tax is not a great way to try to finance a government, especially when it's bouncing up and down. Look at what was predicted main estimates in the current year, $25 million, and then we're only going to get $1.9 million in the current year? I know the pandemic and so on is going on, but this just doesn't seem to be a very reliable way to, or a completely unpredictable way to get revenues for the government. What is the Minister doing to try to stabilize the revenue side of the equation in some kind of predictable way...