Wendy Bisaro

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. Last week the Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association released a pan-northern study on teacher workload, entitled “Understanding Teacher Workloads.”

It is significant to me that the findings from this study are consistent with national and international research. In fact, across many sectors in North America, overwork is a growing problem marked by work intensification. This report’s findings show that although NWT teachers love their jobs and their students, they are burning themselves out, trying to deliver a quality product within a system that is not supporting...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I just thought there might be some Members who might like to make a few comments on the process and so on.

The report lays out pretty well, I think, and in a fair bit of detail the process we had to follow. Bills 1, 2 and 3 followed our normal process. They were read in the House to second reading and then referred to committee, and committee held a public hearing and asked for comment from the public, then held a public hearing and then reported it back to the House as ready for third reading.

But the other seven bills, the process has been kind of hijacked, I guess, is...

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...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Committee would like to consider Bill 1, Bill 2 and Bill 3.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At the outset I would like to thank Mr. Yakeleya for seconding the motion and I bring this motion forward in the interest of safety of our residents and the preservation of lives.

It’s a fact that defibrillators can make a life and death difference in the same way that a fire extinguisher can make a significant difference between life and death. AEDs are portable, easy to use, and modern technology, with some defibrillators, now provides voice prompt instructions and requires virtually no training whatsoever. That’s not to say that training is not required. It is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table a document, a position statement from the Heart and Stroke Foundation, titled “Public Access to Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs).” Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. I don’t think the Minister understood where I was going. I’m not talking about a category in PeopleSoft; I’m talking about something that happens before the job ever gets to PeopleSoft. It certainly, I think, is well known within the government service that a job may be coming vacant and it’s not put into PeopleSoft, it’s not advertised because there’s somebody either within the department or, I hate to say it, somebody’s friend who they may want to get that job.

The Minister kind of led me into my next question and that’s the use of casuals. Casuals are a very common...