Wendy Bisaro

Thank you. So I gather we have no plan. We’re going to turn the legislation over to each individual department. They will do what they will do. I’d like to suggest, again, this is very complex legislation, and I would also like to suggest that not everybody has access to a computer and asking the question by the computer does not lend itself to making suggestions for amendments to a complex piece of legislation.

So can the Premier indicate to me, if we turn this legislation over to individual departments, what kind of a time frame are we talking about? Can he give me any idea as to when we can...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Premier. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement and ask some questions about plans for amendments and changes to the devolution legislation we passed a year ago.

With devolution, we accepted the federal legislation holus-bolus. There were no changes to any of that legislation when we took it over. We put our name on it but we accepted it as it had been with the feds.

I’d like to thank the Premier for his commitment for us to look at all those pieces of legislation and for us to review them, but I’d like to know from the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On April 1, 2014, the NWT achieved our long sought after goal of devolution, and with devolution the GNWT accepted seven pieces of federal legislation as our own. We established NWT acts that mirrored the federal acts.

At the time many residents expressed concern about adopting these laws exactly as written by the federal government, unchanged and unevaluated. Many questioned when the legislation would be evaluated, when it would be amended to suit the NWT, our unique government and territory. We certainly heard a commitment from the Premier to review the seven pieces of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have two comments that I want to make here, and the Minister has heard them already, but they bear repeating. One is my concern with the decentralization of the parks office to Hay River. Not so much that we are moving the positions but that we are uprooting families and forcing people who have lived here for a very long time to reconsider their life’s path, to reconsider whether they are going to take their spouse out of a job and move them with them, children in school. That whole ball of wax that I talked about the other day. I would just like to state again...

I guess maybe the Minister is thinking of something different than what I’m thinking of. The coroner’s report, from my recollection, does not give us how recommendations were handled, what an individual department did with those recommendations. So it’s conceivable that the Standing Committee on Social Programs, for instance, may ask for the data, all the recommendations that came from the coroner in the last year, please provide us with how the recommendations were handled, what each department did. I guess what I’m suggesting is instead of waiting for standing committee to ask for it, the...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the deputy minister for that. My next question has to do with coroners’ reports. The coroners’ reports go to the department and they also often go to committee. Quite regularly the coroner has recommendations within his or her report.

I would like to know from the Minister when a report has a recommendation to a particular department, the coroner falls under Justice but it may be a recommendation to, say, the Department of Health and Social Services, so I would like to know from the Minister what action Justice takes to ensure the coroner’s recommendations are...

Are we on services to public?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Just something that I forgot to ask about when I made my general comments and that’s the status of the women’s correctional centre in Fort Smith, the new building. How is that going? Has it started construction yet? What kind of a time frame are we on? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Premier, then I guess I would like to ask him to advise me and the public. I know there was a lot of concern about the legislation and that changes were needed. So can the Premier tell me and tell the public how they can get their views to the government, to individual departments so that legislation can be amended as necessary? Thank you.

Thanks to the Premier for telling us what has been done. I asked what kind of a plan the government has going forward to review devolution legislation. It sounds from that, that maybe we’re done. I would certainly hope not.

These are very complex pieces of legislation. The education and the advertising campaign that were done, I think that’s great. We needed to advise people of that.

I’d like to know from the Premier, what consultation with groups has been done, or hopefully will be done, because I don’t think it has been done. So, what consultation is planned in order to gauge the interests of...