Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Madam Chair. Are we doing comments or are we going right to the motion?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to express my appreciation to the mover and the seconder of the motion for bringing it forward, but I, unfortunately, don’t support that particular action.

On Friday I put some queries out on social media, through Facebook and through Twitter, and I asked anybody who saw it, listened, heard it, whatever, I asked them for comments and I asked them for positive or negative comments. I didn’t care; I just wanted comments because I felt it very important that we get some kind of feedback.

I had considerable input from my constituents and from other people’s...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is unfortunate that most of the bills required to implement devolution – including the most complex and important legislation – could not be reviewed by the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning due to time constraints. Among these bills are the Northwest Territories Lands Act, the Waters Act, two bills pertaining to oil and gas regulation, and two bills to implement GNWT agreements with Aboriginal governments, related to land, water and resource management, and revenue sharing. The latter two bills are brand new, not mirrored federal legislation, stemming...

Thanks. I’m not quite understanding why the Minister doesn’t really know what these initiatives are at this point. The budget for 2014-15 has been passed. Presumably there’s planning in that budget under the Department of Education, Culture and Employment for new initiatives for the fall of 2014, September, for schools, for new things.

Can the Minister tell me what is in the 2014-15 Education budget that they are planning on implementing and that those changes are going to be coming in under the Education Renewal Innovation Initiative? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do have some questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I’d like to follow up a little bit with regard to my statement. One of the things that add to teachers’ workload is new initiatives and changes made to curriculum, changes made to the way that they are expected to report things, changes made with the way that they’re expected to deal with students in the classroom and in the school.

I’d like to ask the Minister, right now the department is undergoing or has posted an Education Renewal and Innovation Strategy and they’re working on an action...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister, I can appreciate they were filled by casuals, but were they advertised in PeopleSoft as vacancies? They should be. If it’s a casual position and not permanent, if there’s not a permanent person in there, it should be advertised.

The Minister mentioned, in one of his answers earlier, that jobs are not necessarily advertised as vacant because they can be in various stages. They could be in the advertising stage, the interview stage or offer pending stage. It seems to me that we should have all of our jobs posted and if there is a stage, it’s in a certain...

Thanks to the Minister. Four weeks seems like an inordinately long time to go from when you know that you need a body to when it is posted. I appreciate that that’s bureaucracy and my concern is bureaucracy moves awfully slowly.

It’s fairly common knowledge, I think, and I don’t think it’s something that the government really wants to admit, but I think it’s out there that there are jobs that are not posted because they’re being held back for a particular person and I’d like to ask the Minister what he knows about this practice. Certainly I feel, and I think many of the residents of the NWT...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Tomorrow is the 103rd International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day is annually held on March 8th to celebrate women’s achievements throughout history and across nations. It’s also known as the United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace.

On this day we all need to spread the message of women’s empowerment to our families, friends and men in our lives. It’s a day that connects women around the world and celebrates the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. It’s a day to celebrate the women in our lives and...

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

---Carried

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning has reviewed Bill 2, Archaeological Sites Act.

Pursuant to the Northwest Territories Lands and Resources Devolution Agreement, Bill 2 substantially mirrors the Government of Canada’s Archaeological Sites Regulations as provided for in the Northwest Territories Act.

This act applies to all matters respecting archaeological sites and artifacts that were previously governed by the federal Northwest Territories Act and Northwest Territories Archaeological Sites Regulations.

Following the clause-by-clause review, a motion was...