Kevin O'Reilly

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...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am not going to read what is on pages 10 and 11, but just to refresh Members' memory and for those who may be listening, there are some immediate changes that we can make. We have started to do some of this, where we try to make sure that we have interpretation available for the entire sitting day, that there are at least a couple of interpreters available; we are going to look at including statistics around use of official languages in the House in future annual reports from the Legislative Assembly, making sure that some of our basic documents are made available in all...

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Responsibilities established in the mandate letter of the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs include "the development and maintenance of community governments... with sufficient legal authority and resources to carry out community responsibilities." Can the Minister state which NWT communities have been placed under supervision during the past five years and:

When and where MACA or other Government of the Northwest Territories staff have been seconded or assigned to community governments...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Now that I got all that nice stuff off my chest, I have a few tougher questions for the Minister of Finance. I'm looking at page 135, it's the revenue summary. When I look down at taxation, there is the listing for corporate income tax for 2021-2022 seems to be a negative $8.4 million. Does that mean we are shelling out $8.4 million, we're giving it back to corporations? What does this figure really mean? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. The idea behind this motion is that we do need to have a policy moving forward that better recognizes and incorporates the use of all of the official languages in the way that we conduct our work and business here in the Assembly. There are a number of suggestions in the report itself, and I am not going to go over those, but it does involve things like making sure that we have backup interpreters on call and that there is basically a plan, step-wise, for improvement of the use of official languages across all of the work that we do here at the Legislative Assembly. I think...

I want to thank the Minister for that compassionate response. It's great to point to the federal government and try to get compassion from them. I'm talking to the Minister on the floor here; he needs to demonstrate and lead with some compassion from our government. This perverse practice of deducting garnishees from tax refunds from Income Assistance is going to lead to excessive hardships for many NWT residents who received CERB payments. Can the Minister tell us whether this situation is being tracked and what percentage of total Income Assistance recipients are suffering from this...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends, should a situation arise in the future where interpretation is not available for a language being spoken in the Assembly, that the Speaker give strong consideration to a recess in or adjournment of proceedings until such a time as adequate interpretation can be provided. Thank you, Mr. Chair.