Kate Reid

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I am joining in with my colleagues to speak about income assistance services in the NWT. Mr. Speaker, since becoming an MLA, my understanding of social programs and services, like income assistance, has continued to evolve. I have learned through discussions with my colleagues that what I think may be appropriate for Yellowknife residents may not be appropriate or perhaps applicable to other communities or regions. For example, what I think might be a good idea and could really work for folks living in Yellowknife might not work the same way or at all...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Nothing further.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Minister. And I do appreciate, you know, that she wants to do right by the people and maintain monitoring on that. But I'm going to ask a really brief question, but it might be a hard question to answer.

Does the department anticipate now, with the bill in the Canadian Parliament going through on pharmacare, have we started to look at any anticipatory measures around how that might impact this program and some of our pharmacy medication based programs? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'm going to keep these pretty general, just trying to understand a little bit better the Minister's thinking behind the changes to EHB. So in the business plan, one of the items is around stewarding physical health and contributing to fiscal sustainability, and HSS has an item that says income assessment process and fee structures established and incorporated into more HSS program and service delivery areas.

And my question is with regards to EHB specifically but health programs in general, how does this improve access to health care for all our residents per the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So as I said in my statement, structuring our social programs so they're designed to meet people where they're at rather than the other way around is the way to improve quality of life across all of our communities. So would the Minister consider piloting a project within income assistance that would reconfigure and tailor our existing system to the needs of the people in one particular region that maybe isn't dollarbased but is more based around their opportunities for employment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There's a quote I saw online recently that I can unfortunately not attribute but it doesn't diminish its truth. Quote, "The role of a politician is not to get into power. The role of a politician is to act as a steward and caretaker for our society, to manage society for the betterment of all of us."

That quote sums up why I am here today. I want to help provide the direction that leads to the betterment of all of us in the NWT. But the job of governing "better" seemingly gets harder by the day, week, year, and decade. Some of it simply is that all the problems feel like...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I want to preface this question with the fact that I've had really good conversations with the Minister on this, and I think where she and I differ on the perspective of this issue is the how, not the why. The why being, of course, that we want to have midwifery services in our smaller communities, especially for our Indigenous folks who are giving birth. So my question, however, is, you know, given that the GNWT has made repeated public commitments to the expansion of midwifery in the NWT, how did it arrive at the decision to discontinue the establishment of midwifery...

So administrative and support services? Some questions, so thank you.

Could the Minister speak to I'm noticing here on the lines for both operations expenditures summary and I believe maybe I'm mistaken. But anyway, at least in the operations and expenditures summary that the yes, so for the line items for administration and information services, the costs have continually gone up from actuals to revised estimates from 20222023 and in both cases, in these main estimates, have been brought down again. Can the Minister speak to whether or not she anticipates those costs might go up again...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And, again, simply just a strong comment strongly encouraging the Minister to prioritize the timeline of the review to the Act and any possible amendments considering that public safety is a priority of this Assembly, and we hear or at least I hear in my constituency, concerns around public safety in rental units. So more of a comment than a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, you know, I kind of took that as an interest on my own accord to go back and look at the annual reports because that was mentioned, I think, in the business plan explicitly. So if you go back to at least the '18, '19 annual report and every one since, the chief rental officer notes that tenants make many inquiries under section 30 of the Act but do not follow through due to likely onerous processes to complete the work of an application. So I would think that additional support for tenants could help alleviate these issues. And so I'd like to ask the Minister if there...