Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is no formal written policy; however, it is a common long-standing practice within the health and social services system that responding to a tragedy is a priority for the Government of the Northwest Territories. Recognizing that every situation is different, that every community has a different response, what we tend to do is work with the community leadership to find out what it is they expect or what they are hoping to get from the Department of Health and Social Services when a crisis arises, and providing that service as best we can and working with the community to make sure that we are meeting their needs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I think the Minister kind of answered my second question, but I am going to ask it anyway so we can get a little bit further information. Mr. Speaker, when dealing with these tragedies, will the Minister explain what the department does to ensure that there are necessary supports that are available to the communities besides just talking to them?
There have been a number of tragedies in the Member's riding, and the Department of Health and Social Services has responded to each one of them, but in each case the response was different based on what the community told us they were looking for as far as supports. We recognize that smaller communities do not necessarily have access to all the supports that exist in some of the larger communities, and where appropriate and where desired by the communities, we have sent professionals from other communities in when those crises occur.
So we tailor based on need, we tailor based on expectations, and in some situations communities have indicated to us that, you know, they want to handle it on their own; others, they are like, we need some psychologists, psychiatrists, we need some support staff in there. In some situations we found that there is a particular professional out there in the Northwest Territories that the community really feels comfortable with, that they want to bring in. We supported those individuals coming in, but there is no one model, Mr. Speaker.
We work with the communities, we listen to the communities, and we tailor our response based on what we are hearing from them on what they would like to see and how they would like to see that delivered.
I thank the Minister for that answer. Then to the credit of the department in the regional health and social services, we have had a unique situation in the last couple of weeks here and they have done an amazing job with our tragedies, but in regard to dealing with these type of tragedies, can the Minister tell us if the department tries to utilize traditional acknowledge or healing in addressing these issues?
Absolutely. I will give an example. In Sahtu we had a situation where there was a tragedy in one of their communities and what was requested of us was to support a bunch of the youth to go out on the land in order to experience healing and get out of the community, which we supported fully because it was the right thing to do. It is what the community wanted. It is what the youth needed. Listening to the community is critical. We do those types of things.
Sometimes, we hear, we want something done on the land immediately. Sometimes we say, give us a couple of weeks to stabilize here. Then we want to do something on the land. We are open to whatever the communities are suggesting is necessary in these times of crisis. Like I said, it is about working with communities and listening to them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I would like to thank the Minister for the answer. It is great to hear that the department is working with the communities when these tragedies happen.
Mr. Speaker, when a tragedy occurs in the small communities, will the Minister advise us who the department contacts? Is it the leadership, the family, or is there just whomever they decide who needs to be contacted? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In times of crisis, it can be difficult sometimes to determine who the most appropriate person to communicate with, whether it is the family, or maybe the family may not be the appropriate person depending on the incident that has occurred.
As a general rule, we do try to communicate with leadership in the community to help us coordinate our activities in the community, but I say that with a caution that you have to be flexible. You have to recognize that there are times when family might be the most appropriate individuals to be in touch with for a multitude of reasons. As a general rule, we try to do our communications through the community leadership.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Justice regarding maintenance enforcement. As I pointed out in my statement, the thinly resourced maintenance enforcement office must now go sleuthing around to find deadbeat and sometimes abusive spouses, often relying on tips from the very women who need to stay away for their own safety. Yet, as soon as a new hire is made, a flare goes up for the tax office.
I refuse to believe that this information can't be passed on to the maintenance enforcement office. Will the Minister commit to assign staff from his department to work with Finance and plug this loophole? Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Justice.
The maintenance enforcement office, of course, was set up many years ago so that parents did not have to deal directly with those who owed money under orders that were filed with the office. Of course, there are many things the office can do: they can garnish wages; they can seize property; and they can attach and sell assets. The Member opposite has raised an interesting issue which I am prepared to look into as to whether there are constitutional or Charter bars to obtaining the information she spoke of upon the person, or a possible creditor becoming employed. Thank you.
I thank the Minister for his commitment to look into this area and figure out how we can plug this loophole. It is one that benefits some of the most disadvantaged people in our territory, who are single mothers.
Another shortcoming I pointed out was the difficulty in collecting payments from the selfemployed. I will remind the Minister that maintenance payments we collect very often lift the cost of social assistance off the public purse. It is worth making an effort here, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister commit to having his maintenance enforcement people sit down with the tax department experts and make a report to standing committee on possible improvements?
Naturally, Mr. Speaker, we are always interested in improving the system; however, sometimes there are loopholes that cannot be plugged as the result of Charter or other privacy concerns.
We are talking about people who are self-employed, so I do not see how the Charter concerns relate there. I would ask the Minister, when he is looking at how to plug the loophole of finding out who is employed, that he include the people who are self-employed?
Another sort of antiquated portion of this problem is that remittances are forwarded by cheque in the mail; two things which will disappear in our lifetime, Mr. Speaker. We need to tighten up the time frames and methods on these payments. I am told that a change in regulations would make that happen. Will the Minister commit to looking at how to speed up payment?
Yes, without a doubt, it is difficult often to make collections of any kind from the self-employed because they are obviously working for themselves. For that reason, it is difficult often to obtain the kind of information the enforcement office needs to make collection of arrears. With respect to the other matter, clearly we should look into a faster method of getting payment to the creditors.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I hope that I can take that as a commitment that the Minister will look into making the payments faster.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, we recently heard a report of a local woman being shortchanged on an NWT court-ordered support payment because a BC court lowered the amount of money payable under the order. Now, NWT payment levels are set with an eye, of course, to the cost of living here, so a payee's income goes down in BC.
It seems to me that it is wrong that a court there should lower the amount owed under an NWT judgment. My question is: will the Minister commit to consulting with his BC Justice Minister colleague to eliminate this provision in their law? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, payments under court orders are always subject to recalculation. In fact, we are attempting to develop a child support recalculation service that will avoid the necessity of going back to court in every case. Courts, however, always have the right to make changes to payments, and really, that is within their jurisdiction and responsibility. I do not think I could have any influence over that, particularly the courts of British Columbia.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement, I talked about funding towards the anti-poverty initiatives for the GNWT. I would like to ask the Minister responsible for the anti-poverty, the Minister of Health and Social Services, a couple of questions.
The GNWT is committed to compiling a broad set of social indicators to measure its progress on the Working Together action plan. Separate from individual departments' monitoring and accountability plans, how will the GNWT measure and report on its overall success in combatting poverty? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have already talked about this a couple of times during this particular sitting. One of the challenges we have is that we do not have a truly defined definition of what "poverty" is in the Northwest Territories, which does make it hard to evaluate any of the work that we are doing against it. We have made a commitment to work with our stakeholders to find a definition.
At the same time, during our last Anti-poverty Roundtable, the department did present a number of criteria that we are going to consider monitoring and evaluating to help us determine success. We have got a lot of feedback from the participants on things we should be looking at, and that work is being evaluated now so that it could be brought to the advisory group to see if we could bring those criteria down so we could actually have some solid things to evaluate. That work will help us evaluate success going forward, but there are a couple of things that need to be done. The description or the definition is certainly one of them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In the GNWT, which Minister in what department is responsible for tackling and coordinating the various government initiatives that fall under Working Together?
There are a number of Ministers who have responsibility for the individual action items that are included within our anti-poverty documents, the GNWT's Anti-Poverty Action Plan. My role is to continue to work with stakeholders to get this information out, and to remind Ministers of their obligations under this strategic framework, which includes five areas in supporting children and families; promoting healthy living; ensuring safe and affordable housing; making our communities sustainable; and providing an integrated continuum of services. Mr. Speaker, we work together to make that a reality.
What new, not continuing, actions or initiatives have come out of the most recent Anti-Poverty Roundtable?
The priority of the most recent roundtable was to actually develop the evaluation criteria that we will use going forward, and the conversation around a definition came up again. That is our goal in that group, is to share information on different projects that are happening, to share good ideas so that people can take those good ideas back to the regions.
The main activity coming out of that is let's get this evaluation criteria in place; let's start evaluating the great success that is out there today from the NGOs, from the Aboriginal governments, from the community governments, as well as from the GNWT.
Masi. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement I talked about all 14 departments working together. How does the GNWT's vision for reducing and eliminating poverty in the NWT include a plan for eliminating silos between the departments? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we've been hearing about silos for a number of years, and it's certainly a pet peeve of mine; I've raised it as a Regular Member on multiple occasions.
One of the things that's being done to help us break down some of the silos is we actually have some interdepartmental deputy minister committees that are actually tasked with making sure that they're working together on shared files, that they're not duplicating efforts, that they're working for a common goal. They have opportunities to discuss the different pillars that were identified in the framework, as well as the initiatives and work being undertaken on a number of the different priority areas across the Government of the Northwest Territories; for example, mental health and addictions, Justice and Education are clearly partners with Health and Social Services all in an attempt to break down the silos and work together.
Do I believe that all the silos are gone? No, absolutely not, but we are working in the right direction to start breaking these down. I'd say over the last eight years we've seen a number of these silos start to fracture and come apart and work starting to happen together, which I think is a good thing for the residents of the Northwest Territories.
Masi. Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. My question is for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. Earlier today I spoke about the importance of moving forward with our mandate commitment of developing air quality regulations. Can the Minister tell us how many submissions were received on the engagement materials for air quality regulations that were put out last year? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, ENR, we've received 29 formal responses; 10 from the Aboriginal governments and 19 were from stakeholders. We are currently processing the feedback that we heard and, based on feedback received from the parties, we're conducting some additional legislative and legal analysis and technical research on select items in the framework. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thanks to the Minister for that response. Does the department intend to respond to all the concerns and issues that were raised and to do so in a transparent fashion, maybe through a table of responses or some other mechanism, as I recommended in my submission?
Yes, we are planning on responding. We are actually distributing a "what we heard" document on the draft Environmental Protection Act to the parties with the possibility of bringing a draft bill to this House in the near future, and a second round of consultations will be conducted with all the interested stakeholders on the draft bill during that time.
Thanks again to the Minister for his response. Does the Minister, though, actually have a timetable for these steps that he's outlined? Can we expect to see a legislative proposal for the bill, this "what we heard" document, in the current session?
Yes, there is a new timetable. In order for us to appropriately address the feedback received from the engagement consultation, we have had a bit of a process change and therefore a change in the timeline has been required. We are pursuing components of the regulation framework through the Land and Water Board process. As far as the timeline goes, we have an LP that we're working on and we're looking to have an EPA bill, an Environmental Protection Act bill, passed in the fall 2017 Legislative Assembly.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I do appreciate the complete responses from the Minister. I sincerely thank him for that.
I've talked about the importance of sound air quality regulations for the protection of human health and the environment. Given that this is a new regulatory field for our government and one obviously of great public interest, can the Minister commit to bringing forward a draft of the air quality regulations to the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, we'll make an opportunity to have a discussion with committee on the draft regulations. Our intent is to have the regulations come into effect in the spring of 2018, so we'll have some opportunity before then to have some discussions with committee and all interested stakeholders.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on my Member's statement here. Despite the challenges resource developers face today, it is important to understand that the non-renewable resources are the NWT's natural long-term strengths. My question today is for the Minister of Lands: how is this government, through the land-use planning process, working to conclude withdrawal of lands referred to as 41 in the Naats'ihch'oh Park area east-west of Tulita? Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Lands.
The Sahtu Land Use Planning Board is the authority for amendments of Zone 41, and I can advise that there is an application to make an amendment now that the final boundary for the Naats'ihch'oh National Park Reserve is established. So Lands is coordinating a cohesive NWT position to take to the board. Thank you.
I'm glad the department is on that, but looking back, the recommendations by the draft was dated June 2016. The correspondence I received was this past Friday recommending the conclusion of this Lands 41 within the park area. My second question is: will the Minister give us a time frame when this issue can be concluded?
