Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Earlier this week, actually, the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment made a statement about the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway. In there, he said that ITI was working to position residents and business in the Beaufort Delta region to capitalize on economic opportunities from year-round road access. That led me to believe that ITI was sort of in charge of this part of this project and that they would be funding tourism-related activities and capacity building and so on. Why is this $100,000 amount appearing in the Executive and Indigenous Affairs Department? It seems...

I don't want to prolong this, but this is about clarifying the Chief Electoral Officer's ability to carry out investigations and enforcement and I think these largely stem from recommendations that she made, and I think they're very helpful in improving the transparency of the complaint process and providing some firm deadlines and certainty around complaints and. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think I might have to take a page out of my colleague's notebooks here and say, "No." Look, I know that the question was asked rather facetiously, and I do want to provide some assurance that this was an interesting debate at committee that we had more than one time. I think we tried to come up with a reasonable compromise. If I had any ability to influence Ottawa, I would probably be in Ottawa now rather than in Yellowknife. Thank you for that.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that. My colleague's questions made me think of one additional one. I spoke earlier about the $1.7 million shortfall of funding to the district education authorities. If they were fully funded for all the JK students using the formula that the department now uses, is there a commitment on the part of this government to actually make up that shortfall at any point or to change the formulae themselves? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just very briefly. Right now the Chief Electoral Officer is required to file a report following the conduct of an election. The office does have the ability to file other reports as necessary, but this would require the filing of an annual report and I think this would just increase accountability and also give the officer the ability to tell us what they're doing in any given year. I think it's a helpful addition and something that the CEO herself has recommended and I think it's a good tool to increase accountability. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just would like to respond briefly to my colleague, the honourable Member for Yellowknife North. I want to assure him that we did look at all of the options. On page 64 of the Chief Electoral Officer's report, there is a very interesting table of jurisdictions around the world and what their polling days are and also another figure showing the days that other Canadian jurisdictions use. We had all of that information available to us.

I think one of the reasons that we didn't really go with the recommendation from the Chief Electoral Officer was that having a poll on a...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Earlier, I guess, in the last session, I had asked the department to calculate the additional costs -- I shouldn't say "additional costs." What would be the additional costs if junior kindergarten was included in all the formulae that are used to help fund our district education facilities? That additional cost came to about $1.7 million. Just to be clear, that shortfall in funding for the district education authority, that is not covered in the supplementary appropriation. Is that the case, Mr. Chair? Thank you.

Just very briefly. The purpose of this motion is in response to the White Paper that the Chief Electoral Officer submitted, and that was sort of looking at election administration in the NWT in a broader sense comparing us with some other jurisdictions. The committee is not recommending acceptance of all of the recommendations of that report, but this motion is an effort to help clarify some of the roles and duties of the Chief Electoral Officer in terms of modernizing our approach to elections and his or her role into the future. I think this will provide the kind of authority that the office...

Mr. Chair, as you mentioned earlier, we are just going to work away through each of the recommendations as a motion.

The first recommendation I have: Mr. Chair, I move that the Assembly recommend that the Elections and Plebiscites Act be amended to establish an electoral residency requirement of six consecutive months on or before polling day. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So yes, some of it's for unanticipated enrolment, but the $1.542 million for JK, how is that calculated and what does it actually get us? Thanks, Mr. Chair.