Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Chair. Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, received second reading in the Legislative Assembly on November 2nd, 2022, and was referred to the Standing Committee on Government Operations for review.

On January 18th, 2023, the standing committee held a public hearing and completed its clause by clause review with the Minister of Finance I believe. The committee received no submissions on this bill. I thank the committee for reviewing this legislation. Individual Members may have additional comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I've asked this as a written question before and didn't get an answer, but I think the Minister's going to answer it this time.

My question is for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Everyone has acknowledged that there is a municipal infrastructure gap; however, the most recent numbers that are publicly available on the size of that gap are from 2014. My question is, can the Minister provide an updated analysis of the municipal infrastructure gap, and the year in which it was completed, as follows:

What is the current gap by community;

What is the current...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's hard to find a specific budget line for Ebikes buried in the two and a half billion dollars so I was hoping the Minister of Infrastructure could tell us what is the total budget for this rebate program? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Firstly, we now have an environmental liabilities dashboard so I would like to thank the government for taking that step. But it's not quite as fulsome as the federal one and hopefully we get there one day. And to this point, specifically we can see in the public accounts the total environmental liabilities for the GNWT, and then you go to the dashboard and you can see all the sites we have environmental liabilities for but you actually can't figure out what the estimated liability is for any individual site. And Finance, during public accounts, says they don't want to...

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to also emphasize that industry has long asked for a number of these policies too, because they find themselves in confusing situations. There's been a longtime ask for a brown field policy site. And I think also some direction needs to be given on when, you know, a mine's going to be allowed to leave infrastructure, if at all, on a site. I don't think those are best to kind of just be made oneoff kind of ministerial decisions. But there should be some proper policy.

And similarly, there's a motion in here about, you know, relinquishment. We similarly...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It seems to me that there are a number of solutions to make sure that the nursing licensing process runs smoothly. Ontario is exploring as of right nursing licenses for any other Canadian nurse. A number of provinces have issued ministerial directives with timelines in them. Perhaps some sort of temporary license while the whole process goes through is possible. Or, you know, perhaps it's as simple as accepting a less kind of formal version of the paperwork so we can make sure that these processes are running timely. I don't know exactly what the solution is, but I have...

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, I think there's a bit of a I appreciate the Minister saying that. And, you know, I think there's a bit of a first step is a meeting to kind of figure out if they recognize any processes they could speed up on their end. I recognize a lot of this is in other provinces' nursing associations hands. But it seems to me if this is just going to be the reality accepted, then some sort of larger step is needed. And whether that is legislating timelines, ultimately we do have control, whether that's a ministerial directive. I do believe that, you know, if they...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We all know we're at a nursing shortage and the competition to get nurses is getting stricter and stricter. But one of the things that should not be a barrier to hiring more nurses is a backlog process to get nurses from some other jurisdictions licensed.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to walk you through a timeline of a nurse who recently moved to the Northwest Territories, started applying for jobs, took a couple months to get through the interview process and get a contract in hand. Then once they took that contract, they went and applied to the Registered Nursing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's quite clear that the scope of practice of our pharmacists is falling well behind the rest of Canada. And whether that be for emergency prescriptions, prescriptions for minor ailments, adapting in managing prescriptions, ordering lab tests, there is all sorts of things that pharmacists can do in the rest of Canada that they can't do here. So my question for the Minister of health is will we expand the scope of practice for our pharmacists? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Well, after I read this report I hope you'll accept it.

Laughter

Standing Committee on Government Operations report on Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, No. 2.

Bill 62, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, No. 2, received second reading on November 2nd, 2022, and was referred to the Standing Committee on Government Operations for review. Bill 62 would amend the Income Tax Act to harmonize this legislation with the federal government as required under the CanadaNorthwest Territories Tax Collection Agreement. Specifically, Bill 62:

Allows the Canada Revenue Agency to share NWTspecific...