Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yes. I appreciate it, and I did look at the materials that the Minister had used for her dialogue. I think the tax stuff in it was just a couple of slides, so a fuller version of an options paper would be much more helpful. Is that something the Minister could do? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I take it from what the Minister said that there are not going to be any efforts to look at replacing the revenues in some way. How is the Minister going to apply this concept of tax fairness across the other kinds of taxes that we have to pay? Look, I heard the Minister characterize taxes as "burdens" earlier on. Taxes are actually the price of civilization. Governments don't run without taxes or some source of revenue, so how is the Minister going to apply this concept of fairness across other parts of the tax system? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I take it from what the Minister said that this is really about tax fairness, being competitive, and so on. That's all good. Can the Minister tell me how much revenue the GNWT is going to lose as a result of this reduction? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. I'm looking actually at the Department of Finance website. The number of individuals that have accessed the Wage Top-Up program as of March 10th is 2,360, not the 1,000 that the Minister just kind of mentioned, 96 participating businesses. Look, this is a very significant portion of our workforce.

They're going to see their wages drop in one day. It's just not fair, Mr. Speaker. I've tried a number of different avenues here to try to get the Minister to recognize this is a real problem and issue. What other solutions does the...

I want to thank the Minister for that response, but all we have is the Minister's statement and news release about on what basis the Minister made this very important decision. Can the Minister not at least talk about what the recommendations were from the committee and share those recommendations with the public?

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. I look forward to seeing the results of that. Of course, what elders and biologists alike say is that we need to permanently protect key habitat for barren-ground and boreal caribou as part of a balanced program. With low levels of activity and interest, we have got things like land use planning, but we also need other forms of permanent land withdrawals or protection. Can the Minister tell us what our government is doing with regard to permanent protection of key habitat for the Bathurst caribou herd? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks. I think that was a little more helpful. Look, I'm not suggesting that there has to be public hearings and all of that. For the actual time change, yes, there would obviously be notice, but I would expect that there would be notice or at least an opportunity for the public to express their views about whether we should change to Daylight Saving Time, be consistent with Alberta if they make that change, that kind of thing. I am not expecting a big road show, but to say that there's just going to be an email address, I don't think that quite cuts it in terms of public engagement. I'm not...

I want to thank the Minister for his Minister's statement there. No. Look, I do appreciate the work that he and his staff are doing on this. I just wish it was a little bit faster. I described some of the actions and tools that are supposed to be taking place as part of the implementation of the Bathurst caribou range plan, and the Minister himself mentioned the cumulative land disturbance framework. Can the Minister tell us whether this framework has been applied against the proposed Slave Geological Province road, and if so, can he share that analysis with MLAs and the public?

Thanks, Madam Chair. I just wanted to say that, in the last Assembly, there was a petition on changing the time, and there was some support for it. I don't think it was overwhelming, but the whole matter was referred to the Standing Committee on Social Development in the last Assembly, and they did some work on this issue. At the end of the day, their recommendation was that we keep ourselves on Daylight Saving Time so that we would be in sync with Alberta. The bill, though, that we got from Cabinet did not really do that. It gave Cabinet a blank cheque to change time zones, get rid of...

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to say it's a pretty hard act to follow the last couple of statements there. In August 2019, Cabinet finally approved the long-awaited Bathurst Caribou Range Plan. That plan calls for a variety of actions, including a cumulative land disturbance framework, community guardianship, habitat conservation, mobile caribou conservation measures, road planning and management, offsetting compensatory mechanisms, wildfire and fuels management, and online map staking.

It appears much of GNWT's efforts at trying to assist with the recovery of the Bathurst caribou herd...