Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Another issue is presently the Office of the Fire Marshal has taken the position that they will not review any documents unless they are released for construction or final drawings. And the problem with this, Mr. Speaker, is that everyone else and along the process is the contractors GNWT has hired, the procurement we've lined up, all of our capital budget has worked together to get final construction documents. And then those documents are sent to the fire marshal, and it becomes this black hole before any work can start. And, Mr. Speaker, architects are willing to...

Mr. Speaker, the Office of the Fire Marshal, where dreams go to die. Whether you or the GNWT's building a health centre for your patients in Norman Wells or you're the North Slave Correctional Centre who built a beautiful healing room that the fire marshal won't let them use or you're an Indigenous government trying to open a remote lodge in your newly established protected area or you're simply a private business trying to sink your hardcapital to retrofit a building up to code, the Office of the Fire Marshall is sure to make your life difficult, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we are the only...

Yes, thank you. I guess the Ombud Act is an interesting piece of legislation, in that the responsibility seems to lie both with the Department of Justice and the Board of Management. It's a shared piece given that they're a statutory office, similar to the ATIPP Act or similar statutory positions.

But I guess so that's I give the headsup to Board of Management to take this one, and I guess I would ask the Department of Justice in their response to consider why exactly the GNWT has any control over this legislation. I'm a little confused as to why this isn't just solely within the Board of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to respond to some of the comments the Government House Leader made. This bill is not requesting public disclosure of royalty information, which is already something you can access through the federal legislation, although there's some issues in how that's reported, and but the Standing Committee on Economic Development working with the department wants to be part of that royalty review. I'm sure the Indigenous governments and the intergovernmental council want to be part of the royally review and the work ITI is doing. But right now, the government is not...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I suspect  I would ask the Minister to also look at the capacity. I suspect the Office of the Fire Marshal is overworked. I suspect the GNWT capital budget requires them to review far too many plans and they could probably use some more staff, which I would fully support. And along that, perhaps a staff member could create some bulletins, some guidelines on the code interpretation. Right now, there are only three advisories on how the Office of the Fire Marshal will interpret the code. The last one was in 2016, Mr. Speaker. Despite the fact that the Office of the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Presently the Office of the Fire Marshal's industry guidelines set out that the Office of the Fire Marshal can't act in the capacity of an engineering or architectural consultant or else the plan review function would be in a conflict. This is a fair rule, but it seems the Office of the Fire Marshal has taken a very strict interpretation of this whereby they won't give anyone any advice on the interpretation they'll take of the building code. The default response seems to be, go hire a code consultant, which is often thousands of dollars, to a southern consulting firm...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the discussion paper, the department points out a number of barriers. You know, I think a lot of them are monetary. Costs is simply subsidization. The infrastructure is the funding of money to build the infrastructure. But the report says we need between 221 to 299 trained educators in childcare. And then to me, this seems the biggest barrier we're facing is that I know many operators today can't hire qualified staff. I'm hoping to get a sense from the department how realistic, you know, even in the next five years or in this 2030 strategy getting that hundred...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to thank the Department of Education, Culture, and Employment for reaching their discussion paper on early childcare and the great work they've been doing to date. I'm happy to see the funding for increasing education in that. But I think the big announcement is what's  the ambitious words coming out of the federal government, where they've been committed to having the cost of childcare. I know there's $30 billion federally over the next five years.

What I'm looking for from the Minister is do we have a sense of how much that money we will see in our bilateral...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister led into my last question, which is that a number of models exist for universal childcare. The cheapest model being essentially the day home model. But we ran into issues with that. In that, in some communities, it's just not ever going to be profitable to run a day home. And in some communities, you can't find a nonprofit willing to step up and run those programs. On the higher end of that spectrum is making those jobs government jobs where the GNWT would actually hire early childhood educators.

Do we have an idea what kind of model of universal...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate we're negotiating the plan. And I guess I've got to try and squeeze a few more details out of the Minister if I can. And hearing from what the other provinces and territories have said across Canada, there's a big debate about cost sharing and I think fears from a number of provinces that Ottawa will fund us for five years, and then the provinces are going to be left with, you know, a giant childcare bill at the end of that agreement.

And I know a number of provinces have  are quite opposed to this idea of Ottawa kind of imposing childcare. So I was hoping...