Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a couple of comments here. The powers of the coroner are increased quite a bit through these amendments. I and a couple of other members on the committee had some fairly serious concerns about whether or not the powers were going a little bit too far. In discussion during the public hearing and in discussion with the Minister and his officials, I certainly was reassured that these powers are necessary for the coroner to do her job, that they are not going over and above and beyond some of the concerns which I initially had when I first read the amendments to the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that consideration of Tabled Document 324-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2015-16, be now concluded and that Tabled Document 324-17(5) be reported and recommended as ready for further consideration in formal session through the form of an appropriation bill. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I can’t go there. When this report comes out, I’d like to ask the Minister, if it’s going to go to the 18th Assembly, will it be made public? Will it be available to the teachers’ union, the NWTTA? Will it be available to Members of this House, or is it simply going to be a report that is going to sit in the department? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.

---Carried

In October of ’14, we were advised that the report would be completed in July of 2015, which gave the current 17th Assembly Members, particularly the Standing Committee on Social Programs, an opportunity to review that report.

I’d like to ask the Minister, when was it decided that this would be punted to the 18th Assembly? This is news to me. I had fully expected to see this report before the end of this Assembly. Thank you.

I think you got my question. What are the duties, I guess, of the safety representative in this small business of less than 20 employees? Mr. Dolynny is suggesting that it’s quite onerous. What is expected of this person? What’s in regulations that I, as a safety rep, am going to have to do at my workplace?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. About 12 months ago the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment promised, in this House, a review of the Junior Kindergarten program. Oh, that phrase sounds kind of familiar. Promised in this House. I’ve heard that before.

The Junior Kindergarten review was to be in done in July of 2015, and at the time of the announcement, I thought it was an ambitious timeline. Education, Culture and Employment has had a very full plate the last couple of years with Education Renewal Initiative and all the other reviews that they have been, and are, doing. But I took the Minister...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to Mr. Grundy for the explanation. My other two questions have to do with Section 4 in the act, but it states or uses the term “work site” and I don’t see that defined, certainly in this act. It may be defined elsewhere but it is not defined in these amendments.

To the concern that Mr. Dolynny expressed about small businesses being impacted, could I get a definition of what a work site is? I don’t know if it is in regulations already or if the department knows what they intend a work site to be. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a brief comment that I want to make. I’ve been pushing for eight years, not so much lately because we’ve had a change to the Motor Vehicles Act, but certainly in the 16th Assembly I pushed very hard to get some change to the Motor Vehicles Act relative to distracted driving and I’m very pleased to see that we are increasing the fines and adding suspensions. With the change that was originally made, it was almost as if people just totally ignored it and we had almost as many people driving distractedly as we had before we made the original amendment to the...

Okay, thank you. So maybe I’m confused, but it begs the question to me why are we making the amendment? I thought we were making the amendment to make it easier for people to work off their fines and their surcharges and if that’s the case, we’re opening it up so that more offenders can work off their fines and their surcharges. Am I incorrect in that? If we have more offenders working them off is that not more work for staff? Thank you.