Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Madam Chair. I'm still of the view that I think this should be the Minister making a decision. The Minister should be held accountable. It's probably not going to happen all that often, I hope, and I think it has lots of political ramifications. I think the Minister should be the one making the decision, but I'm going to let that one go for now. I'm just wondering: the way that this section reads now, this is not an application-based process. Somehow, a notice of termination lands on an employment standards officer's desk, and they have to make the determination about whether it meets...

Thanks, Madam Chair. It's great that the Minister can confirm it. Can she share it, as well? Thank you.

Thanks. I appreciate that. There is no waiver provision in the legislation as it stands now. This would provide a waiver which could conceivably, or would if the employment standards officer issues an order, shorten up the group notice time period. Thus, workers could lose weeks of paid leave. Is that a correct interpretation? That's for the law clerk. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Item 10 here around accelerating construction of the ice road, crossings at Tulita and Wrigley. Presumably, we know if that was already done; it was well into the season. What actually happened? Thanks, Madam Chair.

I guess I have to guess what the third recommendation was, but I am not going to try to do any math on my feet here. Actually, I will. We have the Wage Top-Up program ending on August 31st, as I understand it, so $18 an hour. The very next day, people are going to see their hourly wages drop to $15.20. It just does not seem to make any sense, so can the Minister explain to the public, the people, the 9 percent of our workforce that is now accessing the Wage Top-Up program, why he chose $15.20, and can he explain why their wages are going to drop from $18 an hour one day to $15.20 the next?

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to assure the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment that I was not dozing off, and he did have my attention when he announced the minimum-wage increase today. However, I want to ask him: I raised this issue about the Minimum Wage Committee in a previous Member's statement. I think he received some kind of report. Is he willing to make that report public? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the Minister's short answer yes there. That was great. The Minister obviously knows exploration and development in the range of the Bathurst caribou herd is probably at an all-time low since the 1980s as a result of the pandemic. Now would seem to be a great time to finally develop and implement mobile caribou conservation measures that would provide temporary habitat protection, so can the Minister tell us about the status of the promised mobile caribou conservation measures and when we can expect to see them finally implemented?

Thanks, Madam Chair. I am sure the Minister is being rather facetious, but seriously, I want to know what kind of public engagement Cabinet would intend to do before making such a change. Are you going to give people a reasonable amount of notice? Thirty, 60 days? Are you going to publish the proposed change in newspapers, on a website somewhere, allow for comments to be submitted? Will there be a summary of those comments, and then some reasons for why the change is going to be made or not? That's the kind of reasonable approach that I would expect.

Let's cut the humour here, and let's get...

Merci, Monsieur le President. Earlier today, I discussed how predator-control measures for the Bathurst caribou herd were ineffective and the lack of progress on habitat protection while the Slave Geological Province road continues to steamroll right along. Can the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources tell us what specific actions have been undertaken in the last year to protect key habitat for the Bathurst caribou herd? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I just would like to thank my colleagues that serve on the committee and the City of Yellowknife that made a written submission. This was an interesting issue that we had to deal with. GNWT was worried about incurring liability for winter roads that were being built off of our roads. We were told that this was an easy fix. We started to deal with this, actually, in the last Assembly. We didn't get to it, so it came back again into this Assembly. Although I thought it was supposed to be an easy fix, that's not the kind of bill we actually ended up with. We ended up with a...