Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Chair. Does the Minister happen to know what the number one sick day in the GNWT is?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am happy to see this. I know that a number of jurisdictions do that, and there are more and more Blue Seal kind of courses popping up at colleges across the country. I am just wondering the impetus for this. Do we plan on giving out any Blue Seals as there are presently people waiting to be able to get certified for one of these? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A head's up: during the Property Assessment and Taxation Act, I am going to be requesting the ability for municipalities to implement vacancy taxes, to have land value taxes, to have different tax tools that the department won't let them. Can I get the Minister to commit that they can go away and educate themselves on what city charters and these fiscal arrangements look like in other jurisdictions, in preparation for further questions? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the complexity here. My concern is I want to find some work to progress the work on the Cities, Towns and Villages Act and surrounding it. I note the department started work on the Fire Prevention Act back in 2008, and hopefully, we see that in the life of this Assembly. I recognize that there were years of work to actually get this done, and it gets to the heart of the NWT: are we going to have public governments in the future, or are we going to have more private governments? Presently, we have legislated that there are public governments across the Northwest Territories, and I...

Mr. Speaker, to be quite honest, I have more faith in our community governments than our own. I believe the structure of community governments allows them to be more nimble. I believe the services they provide their people every day on the ground are more important than much of the work we do in this House. Yet, Mr. Speaker, the GNWT continues to have a paternalistic relationship with its communities. This is no more apparent than with the relationship with our capital city.

Inevitably, Mr. Speaker, in every Yellowknife election, some city councillor decides to talk about a land value tax, a...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Does the Minister have any insight where Alberta is with that? I know they went out for consultation actually. I believe they actually had a bill ready at one point, and then COVID came. Do we have any update on where Alberta is with that, with this change? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I understand that funding for the Chief Electoral Office is somewhat cyclical. If we look in 2019-2020, an election year, it's $1,486,000, and then from year to year, it's about $500 million. However, I see that there is an increase here. Can I just get an explanation why there is an increase outside of an election year? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I see that there is about a $800,000, I'm doing math on the fly, decrease to conservation planning and implementation, looking at page 80, from $5,263,000 to $4,400,000. Can I just get a bit of an explanation of why we are decreasing our funding for conservation planning and implementation? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The document I'm mostly talking about is the fact that we built a giant building, and we decided not to lease it. My final question to the Minister here is: if, in fact, we are renting any of this $18 million to a non-northern landlord, will the Minister commit to conducting the cost benefit analysis of lease to own versus the policy and make sure we are not, in fact, paying a premium to any of these southern landlords? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I seem to recall there was an announcement of a number of positions across the GNWT in regard to this. Can I just get a clarification of whether there was any federal funding attached to those, and if so, how much?