Kevin O'Reilly

I want to thank the Minister for helping me make the case for indexing of income assistance payments. I'm wondering, though, if he could commit to looking at this issue within the next year and bringing that back to the appropriate committee.

Mahsi. We've put one of the Ministers at the end of the row to work today, and I'd like to work with the other Minister opposite at the end of the row. Earlier today I did commend the government for the changes that they've made to income assistance, but I'd like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment whether income assistance payments were increased or not on April 1, 2016, and why.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I will speak today about some of the least advantaged, and unfortunately, least politically influential people in our society, those on income assistance. First, I want to congratulate the Cabinet on its decision announced in the budget address that income from the Canada Child Benefit, and the Northwest Territories Child Benefit, and spousal support will be excluded in the calculation of income assistance payments. I also applaud the announcement of amendments to the NWT Income Tax Act to enhance the NWT Child Benefit, including different benefit amounts for...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll take the Minister up on his offer and put together some thoughts on this and pass those back to him because I think there are ways that we could ensure that we can maintain confidence in our staffing process by ensuring that we have a fair appeal process. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Minister for being so open and transparent.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the response from the Minister, but I guess I'm starting to sense a lot of frustration from this side of the House in the lack of progress on this part of our mandate. This side of the House is willing to work. We want to work on this and help the Cabinet start to move these things forward, but progress has been extremely slow, and I really look forward to a lot more progress on these files. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am really glad to hear that there are folks within the Executive that actually track gender on the boards where we make appointments. I guess I am not as happy to hear that only 39 per cent of the people on boards are women. What actions are we taking to try to improve that? Do we actually have any policy on this? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've been in my position now since November 23rd, or whatever, and although we've had one, perhaps two, briefings on general negotiations, I don't recall actually seeing any sort of regular updates that are provided to Regular MLAs. Is there supposed to be some kind of regular report provided to Regular MLAs on negotiations? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I was going to ask the same question. Thank you.

Page 41 table, here. I have a couple of questions for clarification, and then maybe some comments. The contracted services are going up. In 2015-16, they were $182,000, so they're going up to $362,000 in 2016-17. Are we actually contracting out the negotiations? What's going on here? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes. When can we expect that those guidelines would be available for public comment? Thanks, Mr. Chair.