Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. WHEREAS the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures, in Committee Report 6-19(2), considered the question of remote sittings of the Legislative Assembly and made recommendations regarding changes to the Rules of the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly;

AND WHEREAS, on November 5, 2020, the Committee of the Whole adopted all the recommendations contained in Committee Report 6-19(2);

AND WHEREAS the current Rules of the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly were adopted on December 10, 2019;

AND WHEREAS a copy of an amended Rules of the Legislative...

I want to thank the Minister for that. Look, as I said before, this is a great system, and I really do truly appreciate the work that has gone into setting it up. I'm just wondering, though, in the dashboard, could we have something like the presence or absence of COVID and whether the levels are constant, increasing, or decreasing, and the dates of the tests? Is that the kind of information that could be put on the dashboard when it's available?

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. The issue is not just about indexing, though, it's about trying to guess what the lowest return airfare is each year. I just don't know why Canada Revenue Agency just can't set what it is and tell people or make it publicly available. It's a bundle of issues there, and I'd rather not be here next year or the year after, maybe even the year after that, bothering the Finance Minister about it, so I would like to encourage her to try to work with her colleagues in Nunavut and Yukon, maybe even get together with them and write a...

I want to thank the Minister for that offer to follow up. I would encourage her to do that. That consultation finished in April 2019 and, as I said, it's been radio silence ever since. A lot of residents did not travel South in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. It is my understanding that recreational trips taken within the NWT are still eligible for vacation travel assistance deductions, as long as people have receipts. Can the Minister tell us whether this is still the case and whether there have been any discussions with Canada Revenue Agency officials about flexibility with this travel...

Merci, Monsieur le President. We all love to hate northern resident tax deductions. I seem to raise these deductions on an annual basis, like a broken record. I know this is not our Minister of Finance's program, but it is going to take our Finance Minister's intervention to get this fixed. We all know the ridiculous problems with the northern resident deductions: they are not indexed in any way; it takes monumental efforts to adjust the amounts; Northerners are subjected too often to time-consuming audits; and the annual guessing game of what the Canada Revenue Agency might accept as a lowest...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I move that the chair rise and report progress.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I guess I would like to respectfully say that, if it was increased during a year with COVID, we are probably going to need more money for the year coming up, but I am going to leave it at that.

I want to move on to federal engagement, where the positions, the support money for that office in Ottawa has been cut. I was sceptical of that work to begin with, in the last Assembly, but I guess I pushed this with the Premier, some of my colleagues on the other side several times, about the importance of not just meeting with a party that is in political power, that holds the...

Thanks, Madam Chair. Look, I am happy to work with the Premier and this Cabinet on this, but I am going to narrow my question right down. Have new mandates been provided to any of the negotiators since this Cabinet came in, yes or no? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Committee would like to consider Tabled Document 286-19(2), Main Estimates 2021-2022, with Executive and Indigenous Affairs. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Nothing further.