The motion is on the floor and non-debatable. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Bill 38 has had a first reading. First reading of bills. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Hay River South, that Bill 39, Environmental Rights Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The motion is on the floor and non-debatable. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Good afternoon, committee. I will now call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of committee? Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, committee would like to consider Tabled Document 322-18(3), Main Estimates, 2019-2020, with the Department of Infrastructure and Industry, Tourism and Investment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Beaulieu.
Sorry, Mr. Chairman. I missed one. We would also like to consider Bill 32, Naturopathic Professional Statutes Amendment Act. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. We will continue after a short recess. Thank you.
---SHORT RECESS
Committee, we have agreed to consider Bill 32: Naturopathic Profession Statutes Amendment Act. I will ask the Minister responsible for the Bill to introduce it. Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to introduce Bill 32, the Naturopathic Profession Statutes Amendment Act. The Legislative Assembly passed the Health and Social Services Profession Act to enable the Government of the Northwest Territories to regulate numerous different professions under one legislative framework and later amended the legislation to strengthen competency requirements for professionals.
Work has been under way to draft professional regulations to bring the Health and Social Services Profession Act into force. This includes regulations for three groups of professionals; the emergency medical service providers, naturopathic practitioners, and psychologists. We expect that the Health and Social Services Profession Act will come into force later this year with the regulation of EMS providers, followed by naturopathic practitioners, and both will be newly regulated professions in the Northwest Territories.
Some of the Members may recall that naturopathic practitioners were added to the list of professions to be regulated under the Health and Social Services Act in February of 2014. This decisions was supported by requests from MLAs, members of the profession, and by the 17th Legislative Assembly Standing Committee on Social Programs. Regulating a profession helps ensure the safety of the public, as it establishes rules and requirements for how a profession must practise, train, and conduct themselves.
Since naturopathic practitioners are not currently regulated in the Northwest Territories, there are very few parameters for how the profession can practise. Once regulated, naturopathic practitioners would be subject to complaints and disciplines processes if a patient, a member of the public, another professional, or a complaints officer files a complaint.
Prior to bringing these regulations into force, consequential amendments must be made to the Medical Profession Act, the Pharmacy Act, and the Public Health Act. As regulations do not have the authority to amend or repeal an existing act, the department is putting forward this bill to address the consequential amendment required by the new Naturopathic Professions Regulations.
The proposed amendments will:
allow persons who are entitled to practise under the naturopathic profession regulation to use the title of Doctor or the abbreviation "Dr." in accordance with the regulation;
exclude naturopathic professionals from the Medical Professions Act;
replace the term "naturopath" with the term "naturopathic doctor" in the definition of the personal services establishment under the Public Health Act; and
allow pharmacists to accept a prescription issued by a naturopathic practitioner who is entitled to prescribe a drug.
The change to Bill 32 will not come into force until the regulations have been finalized and are ready to come into force.
This concludes my opening remarks, and I will be pleased to answer any questions that the Members may have. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. I will now turn to the chair of the Standing Committee on Social Development, the committee that considered the bill, for opening comments. Mr. Thompson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Standing Committee on Social Development concluded its review of Bill 32: Naturopathic Profession Statutes Amendment Act on February 14, 2019, with a public hearing held at the Legislative Assembly building.
Six members of the public were in attendance at the hearing, and committee received submissions from Nicole Redvers, a naturopathic doctor. She expressed support for this legislation and was pleased to see naturopathic established as a regulatory profession within the NWT. Committee agrees and also supports the bill as outlined by the Minister. Individual Members may have additional comments or questions as we proceed with consideration of this bill. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, chair. Minister, would you like to bring witnesses into the Chamber?
I would, Mr. Chair.
Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber. Minister, please introduce your witnesses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today are Christina Brownlee, who is legislative counsel, and Gary Toft, the director of policy, legislation, and communications with Health and Social Services.
Thank you. I will now open the floor to general comments on Bill 32. Is the committee agreed that there are no further general comments?
Agreed.
Agreed. Thank you. Committee, can we proceed to a clause-by-clause review of the bill?
Agreed.
Agreed. Committee, we will now defer the bill number and title until after consideration of the clauses. Please turn to page 1 of the bill. Clause 1?
---Clauses 1 through 4 inclusive, approved
Committee, to the bill as a whole, Bill 32?
Agreed.
Does committee agree that Bill 32: Naturopathic Profession Statutes Amendment Act is now ready for third reading?
Agreed.
Agreed. Thank you, committee. Bill 32: Naturopathic Profession Statutes Amendment Act is now ready for third reading. Does committee agree that this concludes our consideration of Bill 32: Naturopathic Profession Statutes Amendment Act?
Agreed.
Agreed. Thank you, Minister. Our thanks to your witnesses. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses from the Chamber. Thank you, committee. We will now proceed to consideration of the main estimates, Tabled Document 322-18(3), Main Estimates, 2019-2020. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Agreed. Thank you. We will consider with the Department of Infrastructure. Minister, would you like to bring witnesses into the Chamber? Thank you. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.
Thank you. Minister, please introduce your witnesses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my left is director of Corporate Services, Vince McCormick, of Infrastructure. On my right is Paul Guy, deputy minister of Infrastructure. On my far right is Jaylene Robertson, assistant deputy minister of Regional Operations. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Schumann. Committee, we have agreed to resume corporate management, operations expenditure summary on page 239. Any questions from committee? Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When we left off, I think one of the Members was starting to talk about some of the concerns that committee has raised in the past with regard to the centralization of some of our government departments. While it is appreciated that we are building some efficiencies and ways to be effective by doing some amalgamations, the concern lies that, over the years, as we have begun to kind of centralize human resources finance, procurement, and even IT into these centralized government departments, the concern is that a number of the departments and particular regional offices have started to lose the ability to build and maintain the relationships that they have had for a long time with contractors, consultants, and maybe other community partners.
I would like to ask the department, in particular the Minister, because Infrastructure is one of these amalgamation departments and they also seem to be the big spender, I respect and appreciate that, you know, they are tied heavily with the federal funding contributions, and that is well appreciated. I would like to ask the Minister if the department is doing any kind of observation or measuring of what the impacts of these recent amalgamations and centralizations are having on some of the regions and other departments that this department serves, because this is a department that serves other departments of the Government of the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Minister Schumann.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't think the amalgamation of these two departments in particular has affected that. We have so many regional people out there who interact with the general public and the contractors on a general basis, that either it be procurement or superintendents who are on the ground that deal with contractors on a day-to-day basis. Nothing has come to my attention that clearly made this amalgamation detrimental to the contracting side of things, as far as I am concerned. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Schumann. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that that is the opinion of the Minister, and we have seen some concerns from other departments whereby the ability of a department, for example, that used to once be able to put out its own procurement and be able to hire its own workforce, be able to manage its own accounts receivables and payables and its own procurement, it is now a challenge to do that because we have essentially taken are of those abilities and centralize them into -- maybe, I guess, the question is something that I will reiterate again later when we meet with Finance. It might be better suited there. I apologize, Mr. Chair. I am going to defer that question until a later time with the Department of Finance. Thank you. For me right now with the activity of corporate management, I have no further questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Would you like to comment, Minister Schumann?
I guess the one thing I would like to add to that is one thing that we did in this government, too, is we added a whole new region in the Northwest Territories and in the Sahtu, which, you know, there was some strong support from the Member from the Sahtu region to make them their own region. I think, as we are moved forward with five strong regions, the regional support has just gotten better by doing that, as well. That is just an extra comment I wanted to add. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Schumann. Any further questions, committee? If not, I will read the page. Infrastructure, corporate management, operations expenditure summary, 2019-2020 Main Estimates, $10,715,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Next, we have Infrastructure, programs and services, operations expenditure summary from pages 242 to 246. Any questions? Mr. Testart.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I note that this activity includes procurement shared services. I would like to know: what funding is being put in place to enhance the department's outreach to clients through procurement shared services to better understand the GNWT's procurement system? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Testart. Mr. Guy.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. In this budget, there is funding to support a number of outreach programs that we do through procurement shared services. We deliver workshops for businesses and local governments. Over the past year, we had 60 participants attend these workshops from across the territory.
If I go back, and we are still tabulating information for this fiscal year, for 2017-2018, we delivered 18 workshops to businesses on how to do business with the GNWT, which 200 participants attended. We do those workshops in the regional centres or anywhere there is a request to hold a workshop in the Northwest Territories. These things cover things on how to bid on GNWT tenders, how to use the contract and opportunities website, any changes that are made in procurement policies and guidelines, and how to fill out forms and follow some of the preference programs. We also deliver programs and training to our own employees. We have held 83 procurement employee training workshops in 2017-2018, where over 690 employees participated.
A number of these things, we also reached out to the construction community and the contractor community, and held workshops with the construction associations, the engineer associations, the consulting engineers, and Arctic Association to review the approved capital plan once it has been passed, so that vendors and contractors have an idea of what the contracting opportunities are coming up. Those things are all base funded in this budget under procurement shared services. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Guy. Mr. Testart.
If I could just get some information clarified: I heard both 60 participants and 200 participants for the last fiscal year. Which number is accurate? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Testart. Mr. Guy.
