Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For those of you in this House who grow tired of hearing from me all of the time, I would like to try something different today and read an essay by Raven Mudford, a student at Ecole Sir John Franklin, who has been advocating to lower the voting age.

"Teenagers deserve the right to vote. They deserve the opportunity to have a say in how they enter the world of adulthood. Why, in the context of voting, do we see them as children, but in others 'young adults'? We trust them to enter the workforce, drive cars, take care of children, protest, but not influence their futures...

Yes, I have canvassed this with a few mayors and a few communities, and I think there is a mixed response. I think one of the solutions there is just simply give our municipalities more control over their elections and more control over residency requirements, age requirements, or how they want to run their own elections. As part of bringing this forward to the NWTAC, and I'm happy to hear that from the Minister, can the Minister also bring forward lowering the voting age to 16 or at least giving municipalities an option to make that choice themselves?

No further questions, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment who I know has plans to bring forward the Education Act, and as part of that, my question is: would he show support for students and allow them to vote in their school board elections at age 16? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank, Mr. Chair. Yes. I guess that makes sense to me. We are not going to cut off core services anytime, but we have a yearly fund of fires to supplementary appropriation, which can range from $4- to $50 million and have large fluctuations. I think probably there is some room to have that conversation later. However, I wanted to switch to, I believe this is the funding for the Office of the Public Guardian. Can I get a clarification of whether there has been an increase to the Office of the Public Guardian? I note the department has a goal of decreasing the wait list for the number of people...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am just looking at the 2020-2021 revised estimates, $31 million. We passed this in a supplementary appropriation, but I know, since that time, a number of cost-saving measures have gone on. Do we have a forecast of how much we will actually spend on the COVID secretariat this fiscal? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I understand there are some plans to run a deficit-reduction plan. Are we expecting that this main estimates that we are looking it for 2021-2022 will actually add to the deficit, or are we now budgeting enough that the deficit will essentially stop? I am not expecting us to pay off the $120 million, but is it going to get bigger this fiscal, as well? Thank you.

I am sorry to hear that the Minister has lost her individual identity. I quite like her as a person, and I was looking forward to seeing that signature. I am glad the Minister mentioned procurement because I think what has happened is that, due to the federal government being in charge of procurement on this, the GNWT has kind of stepped back on the economic recovery role, but despite numerous requests from the Giant Mine Oversight Board to have the federal government kind of understand the North and understand our labour needs, the federal government has also kind of stepped away from...

I'll try again. When I look at the department's business plan in here, there are service level metrics to be devolved. There are employee engagement and satisfaction to be devolved. There is employee turnover to measure. There is long-term care to be measured. There is employment engagement service. Fifty percent of the department is supposed to be surveyed. I have no sense of whether that work has been done or is done. I have no sense of whether this is the adequate money to do it. Perhaps, as a start, if I could get the Minister to commit to what is being done by the Department of Finance in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I understand that ENR is the project lead on the Giant Mine and is leading much of our remediation work. There is a bit of a conflict of interest when the arm of government that is responsible for oversight and regulating contaminated sites, if I also ask them to advocate on behalf of the companies to capture benefits that they are regulating, so I'd like to understand what our Indigenous ministry is doing to build a remediation economy. My first question for the Minister of ITI is: in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and our post-COVID economic recovery plan, is the...