Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your Standing Committee on Government Operations is pleased to provide its report on the 20212022 Review of the Official Languages Act and commends it to the House.

Over the last two years, the Standing Committee on Government Operations reviewed the Official Languages Act. This law protects speakers of the NWT's eleven official languages and outlines language rights, rules, and responsibilities in different parts of government. This law requires a review about every five years. Previous committee reviews were released in 2003, 2009, and 2015.

For our 20212022 review...

Thank you. I also see that we're $633,000 more for chemotherapy drugs. Can someone just elaborate why we're incurring this cost? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Across the Northwest Territories there's essentially three types of tenure. There's community government leasing. I got no problem with those. Community governments can sort out how they want to lease their land. Then there's fee simple title. Never hear any complaints about anyone who owns their house, Mr. Speaker. And then there's the GNWT lease, which to me the main benefit seems to be a miraculous ability to be brought up in every single meeting and immediately derail it. No matter the meeting we're having, someone inevitably starts complaining about a 600 percent...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I feel obligated to ask a couple questions about the $25 million in health spending, and I know the Department of Health and Social Services is just kind of a black hole we have to fund. I'm looking at the $8.4 million increase to standard physician contracts. Can the Minister just elaborate a little bit more of what we're increasing, how much more the doctors are getting paid to increase competitiveness. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm looking at page 159, and I see that human resources unit within Finance is adding eight new positions. Can someone just tell me what those positions are? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This weekend is my least favourite day of the year, Mr. Speaker. And that's the day the clocks go forward. And, Mr. Speaker, it's not just me who hates the time change. Every single year the day after the time change there's a spike in car accidents, Mr. Speaker. People hate the time change so much they are crashing their cars in protest.

Mr. Speaker, the day after time change, the economy loses millions of dollars in economic productivity, and the Monday following time change is the Number 1 sick day consistently in the GNWT, Mr. Speaker. People awake and, in protest of...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can someone just try to explain to me whether there how this unit has changed over time with health hiring? My understanding is prior to the amalgamation, the health authorities were doing all of their hiring themselves and they had their own HR officers. That's no longer the case. And I think now we have we still have a bit of a hybrid model where there are some hiring being done in health with the assistance of this unit? Can someone just try to explain it to me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Is the Premier going to listen to the people of the Northwest Territories and get rid of the time change?

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I guess I don't fully quite understand it. One of the complaints I know we have heard is that a manager over at the health authority will identify a candidate and want to hire them and then they have to quick it over to, I assume someone in HR I don't know if it's actually specifically the recruitment unit and then there's this turnaround time. And I believe, you know, we've actually been improving it so perhaps that is the question. Can someone just tell me how quickly HR is now processing, especially for health and I know there's multiple different...

Yeah, thank you. Can we perhaps well, can we get an update when we think we can get ECE and health on DIIMS? And I think perhaps if I my understanding of the situation is that there's parts of them that will probably never get on DIIMS. You know, health is going out to get brand new health records software that I think is 10 million plus dollars, and ECE has been trying to get student records software that it's not that much, but it's millions of dollars as well. They just have unique records that, you know, need their own software that's not DIIMS. But the rest of the kind of operational...