Rylund Johnson

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I have asked these questions of Justice before. Today I directed them to Health because the decision ultimately made was by the BC public health asking for an exemption to the federal Minister of Health.

And so my question for our Minister of Health is does she agree with the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, 60 percent of the Canadian public, the overwhelming amount of public health officials, the federal Minister of Health, the BC Minister of Health, and really anyone who has worked on the front lines, that decriminalization is a step that saves lives and...

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to substance abuse, two principles must inform our decision. That is evidencebased decision making and harm reduction. If these are the driving principles, Mr. Speaker, we will ultimately lower the number of people addicted to drugs and alcohol in this territory.

Mr. Speaker, as the Minister of Health spoke today in her statement, I truly believe that she believes these principles are essential to informing our decisions. However, Mr. Speaker, if we believe this, that substance abuse is a health issue, we must remove the criminal law from the picture.

Yesterday, the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I've got a rather specific question about the Active Carbon Sequestration and Forestry Fund.

My understanding is this was initially a 2019 election promise by the prime minister to plant two billion trees, that's where it started I believe, and then we, for a number of years, couldn't spend it because there's a long standing kind of policy in ENR that we don't actually do tree planting and reforestation. It's a we wait for the forest to naturally regrow itself. But now it appears we are spending that money and replanting some trees. So if someone could just tell me the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I think we should maybe talk about this. It's $15 million new dollars to the health authority and, you know, $10 million of that is coming from what was previously budgeted for the COVID secretariat. So I think we are in the final days of winding down the COVID secretariat. I guess I was just hoping the Minister could perhaps give us an update a few months ago when we approved the total COVID secretariat budget. There was some talk of keeping some staff on going forward as we switch to endemic status. There was some talk about perhaps keeping 811, just a bit of an...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends the Department of Education, Culture and Employment clarify the role of the languages commissioner, specifically regarding how the languages commissioner may bring forward concerns and recommendations to the Minister responsible for Official Languages. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess the list of amendments are pretty innocuous and I'm not all that opposed to them. But I do want to speak to I think is an absolute priority that this Assembly amend the Liquor Act. I know the department did a What We Heard, did some engagement, and has gotten that feedback from the public which we hopefully will see soon. And it raises some very significant questions about how we're going to update our outdated liquor regime in this territory. Clearly this bill does not do that. But I grow concerned by introducing this amendment to the Liquor Act. It is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I heard the Premier state that the plan is, you know, we're doing this inventory exercise and then hopefully there will be an action plan. I'm just wondering whether we have a timeline on when that action plan will be public? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Premier on the work we're doing to implement the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

My understanding is that the Premier had kind of at step zero asked the GNWT to take each of the articles of UNDRIP and then do an internal inventory of current programs and services or current policies to kind of show where we already would align or perhaps didn't align, you know. Perhaps there's some areas, some articles which we are considering we are already complying with. So this would kind of just be something the Premier was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When this House first made it a priority to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, I think there was varied understandings of what that meant. And how could there not be, Mr. Speaker? It is a very aspirational document with many sections and many different areas to cover.

However, Mr. Speaker, I think all of us meant it would be doing something in this House. And to date, we have not seen any work to actively implement the UN declaration. Some of us thought perhaps we would just pass legislation similar to BC or the federal government which...

Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories provide a response to this report within 120 days. Thank you, Madam Chair.