Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Presently, ENR has a wildlife veterinarian. They do lots of great work. It's essential work to making sure the population and health of our wildlife is there. I now learn that public health has a bit of a role in zoonotics and MACA seemingly has some of a role but seems to deny it consistently. My question for the Minister of health is: is it possible to work with those departments, see if there are some gaps here, and possibly create a funding pool to address them?

Today is actually an appropriate day to talk about zoonotics as the first dog in Canada tested positive for COVID-19 today, so there is a bit of an overlap. One of my main concerns in this area and one of the great works that the NWT SPCA does is making sure dogs are vaccinated for rabies and making sure rabies does not then transfer to the human population. Presently, that is not being done in all of the communities. Can the Minister of health put together a plan to make sure we are having rabies vaccines in all of our communities?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Committee's discussion with the IPC turned to the subject of "open government." The purpose of open government is to make information the government holds easily available to the public. A person would not need to make a special request for information. This makes government more accessible and accountable. It could also reduce ATIPP requests.

The IPC noted the benefits of government building access and privacy into programs, policies, and legislation as they are developed. This process is called "access by design" or "proactive disclosure." It helps ensure that the...

Mr. Speaker, I am trying to advocate for those exemptions so we can get a path to a living wage. I recognize that, the first few months on a job, perhaps it is justified to pay someone a lower rate. However, I think, if we're going to get in trouble with human rights, it's probably the fact that $13.46 at full-time is less than $30,000 a year. People are living in poverty if they earn our minimum wage. The market has moved well beyond this. You cannot hire someone in this territory, a full-time adult, and pay them $13.46. We have simply made our minimum wage irrelevant. Is the Minister willing...

I really look forward to that report. Right now, my understanding is: there are less than 100 people that make less than $13.46 in the Northwest Territories. The vast majority of those people work in bars. I, myself, was a bartender for many years, and I know the paycheque almost becomes irrelevant because you make the money through tips. I want to raise the minimum wage. I want to go high, but I don't want to get pushback from the hospitality industry who's suffering. Many jurisdictions have made a lower rate for liquor servers. Is the Minister willing to do that?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think it's a little rich for us to say it's not our mandate to provide home heating and then to tell the communities, which it's clearly not their mandate, to all of a sudden expand and to become a utility. Is the Minister willing to approach the Canadian Infrastructure Bank, where that federal funding is sitting, to fund a territory-wide feasibility study of biomass district heating, and we can find the most cost-effective way to do this for every community in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am appreciative of that work, and I know the NWT Housing Corporation has been connecting some of its buildings using district heating and putting pellet boilers in. When we do this analysis, the City of Yellowknife knows better than no one. They actually won an award for 2018 for connecting their facilities, and it has saved them money. It's proven to work to get the pipes in the ground. There is no better place than downtown Yellowknife to implement district heating and connect all of those large towers. However, we do not own those towers. The City of Yellowknife is not willing to become a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This past Monday, the Minister of Infrastructure gave this House an update on our 2030 Energy Strategy, and I would like to thank the department for all the work they are doing, and I would like to thank the Arctic Energy Alliance for all the great work they are doing. Specifically, I am a huge fan of the wood-stove program. For some reason or another, we started building houses in communities and did not put wood stoves in them. This was a mistake. Now, we have this program where Canadian-manufactured wood stoves make their way up the Mackenzie, and they make their way...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Hay River North, that Bill 11: Legislative Assembly Standardization Act, be read for the third time. Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded vote. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The way that works in most jurisdictions is: the tips do not bring you up past minimum wage, then their employer must make up the difference. It's not a matter of: you don't get tips, you're working at a lower rate. Another exemption that I think would allow us to go higher is a lot of jurisdictions have a training wage. They have a wage for people in their teenaged years. This is the other argument that's often said why we can't raise the minimum wage because people have first-time jobs or they're just training. Is the Minister willing to implement a training wage for the minimum wage?