Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Tabled Document 348-19(2) will be reported as ready for consideration in formal session through the form of an appropriate bill. Thank you, Ministers, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing before us. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses from the Chamber. Committee, we have agreed to consider Committee Report 12-19(2), Report on the Review of Bill 20, An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act. I will go to the Chair of the Standing Committee on Social Development for any opening remarks. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Bill 20, An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act, received second reading in the Legislative Assembly on November 4, 2020, and was referred to the Standing Committee on Social Development for review on February 10, 2021. The standing committee held a public hearing with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and completed its clause-by-clause review of the bill with the Minister on March 2, 2021. The committee supports the introduction of emergency leave, however, thoroughly debated the delicate balance between the rights of employees and that of employers. During the clause-by-clause review of the bill, the committee passed one motion with concurrence from the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I would like to thank the stakeholders that provided valuable feedback during the review of the bill and thank the committee for their efforts in reviewing this legislation. I would also like to thank all Regular Members who participated in the committee's review of this bill. Individual Members may have additional comments or questions. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. I will now open the floor to general comments on the Committee Report 12-19(2), Report on the Review of Bill 20, An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act. Do any members have general comments? Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I, too, would like to thank the committee for allowing me to sit in on their proceedings with regard to Bill 20. As the chair said, the Employment Standards Act is almost kind of like a sacred piece of legislation where you try to balance the rights and interests of workers and employers. I think it does generally reach that kind of proper balance. I think that the committee worked very hard to improve particularly the group termination notice provisions of the bill that was brought forward. It really wasn't clear who would initiate the notice and where it would go and how employees would find out about it and so on. I think they made some great strides in improving much of that. I want to thank them for their efforts at doing that.
I'm still quite concerned with the emergency leave provisions in the bill. It is unpaid leave, and right now, with the federal government, that unpaid really is paid leave because you can apply for federal benefits. When the federal government ends those benefits, if we were in another emergency situation, there would be no pay for someone who needs to take emergency leave. This issue was raised by the Status of Women in their submission, and I think the issue is that it really wouldn't create any kind of an incentive for people to self-isolate if there was a pandemic going on. You would have people that would be going to work sick and possibly spreading things and so on. That issue has not been addressed in the bill. I know there is a recommendation that is going to come forward shortly that will attempt to try to deal with that but in any event that, I think, remains a piece of unfinished business.
The one area that I'm most concerned about is the group termination notice provision. That is because, at the end of the day, if and when these changes are adopted, workers will lose weeks of paid work. I think that is indisputable, and I will ask the Minister for his interpretation. Workers will lose weeks of paid work if this goes ahead as is. In any event, I do have some further comments and questions for the Minister when we get into actually reviewing the bill, and of course, I'm going to be bringing forward a couple of relatively small amendments to try to even up the balancing, I think, a little bit better to improve the bill a little bit further. Again, I want to thank the committee for its hard work. This is a difficult, complex set of changes that had been proposed, and I think that the committee did a good job at trying to reach a better balance. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Madam Chair. This was my sort of first opportunity to really delve into legislative work sitting on this side of the House. I found it to be a really interesting process, and I'm not quite sure if I fully understand how everything is supposed to work. I do really appreciate the Minister and the clerk for walking us through it and being patient and answering questions, of myself, anyway. One thing that I do just want to comment on generally is that I find that this is an opportunity for us to get ahead of a situation that could occur next time. This is a lesson learned from COVID where we're trying to make things so that, when a situation occurs, the red tape is not necessarily there and we can react more nimbly.
While it may not be perfect in addressing all the situations because, honestly, we can't put the onus always back onto the very struggling private sector to pay when we wouldn't be doing that in other scenarios, I see where this would be a difficult thing for us to navigate. However, it's a situation that will occur anyway when there is an emergency, that notification will not be able to be given, and instead of leaving companies sitting in violation of an act or a regulation, instead, they can deal with the situation and not be penalized for it. Employees will still be paid out under the contracts for the amount of leave that they are entitled to. Again, I think this is a bigger conversation, then, about whether or not service workers and people who generally don't have great benefits as employees actually should deserve a better benefit package, and I think that's the conversation that should be had if we're talking about people getting unpaid leave. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Any other general comments? Seeing no further comments, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment undertake public consultation to develop prescribed emergency provisions, including those that have already been defined in relevant sections of Bill 20. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. The way the bill reads, the Minister does have the ability to bring forward regulations to further describe, or prescribe, I guess, in what situations unpaid emergency leave would be made available to employees. The Union of Northern Workers, in its written submission, suggested that, if and when these regulations are made, it would be a good idea to allow for a period of some form of public consultation. That's consistent with a lot of things that we heard in the last Assembly about interest in public participation and public comment on the development of regulations, so I do support this motion. I thank the Union of Northern Workers for bringing it forward, and I hope that the Minister will accept this and find a way for the public to have some involvement in finding in what situations this emergency leave might continue after this pandemic. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment undertake a review of the territorial government programs and policies to allow financial resources to be made available while an employee is required to take unpaid emergency leave. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. Yes. This issue was raised in written submissions from the Status of Women Council and the Union of Northern Workers. As I mentioned earlier, it is good that people will have access to unpaid emergency leave. What that means is that, if they have to go and self-isolate, an employer has to allow them to take the time off. It's unpaid, but their job is kept for them so that they can return to a job. It's not just the individual employee; it can be a member of their family who might need care, and so on. I think that's a good thing to do, and in fact, we are actually required to do it, if you read the plain-language version of the bill, because we have accepted through the Safe Restart Program that the federal government has. We were required to make this change to our legislation, so that's a good thing.
The downside is that, as I said earlier, there is no incentive for someone to take the unpaid leave. Some people are just not going to even be able to afford to take unpaid leave, so there is no incentive for someone to self-isolate and stop a pandemic, necessarily. Thank goodness we have the federal funding now, during the pandemic. When that's finished, I'm not sure that this is going to help, and that's, I think, precisely what the Status of Women Council said. We need to find a way to ensure that, if we want people to behave correctly and isolate and so on, there has to be a bit of an incentive to help them do that. They have to be able to continue to make some kind of a living. How that gets covered is the essence of this motion. Is it something that should be covered by the employer, should it be covered by government, or a combination of those? That's an interesting question, and I think that's what is at the heart of this motion, is to consider whether we can find ways to support people who need to take emergency leave and how we're going to pay for that. So I would encourage that the Cabinet respond positively to this motion and investigate ways to make this unpaid emergency leave actually paid into the future. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Further to those comments, though, I would like to go to bat for the business industry. The majority of our private sector is small businesses, considered small businesses when you look at the rest of southern Canada, et cetera, so if the GNWT looks at this and decides to put the burden or the onus back on the private sector, save a few large, large mines that might be able to handle it, I don't think others would. I'm just putting forward that I would very much like to see the government consider creating a social program for emergency access. I don't know what you would call that, but something similar to, say, a FEMA-type situation in the US where, if there is an emergency, people can apply for it, you have several pots of funding throughout all of your departments that cover this type of situation. We saw it for ENR with the trappers mitigation fund, so maybe perhaps, rather than having these little pots of money sprinkled in all the departments, it should become a centralized emergency fund that anybody can access and that would reduce some of the red tape and duplication of effort. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. To the motion. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm supportive of this motion and conducting the review, but I just want to make a few comments. Right now, the Northwest Territories provides five unpaid sick days a year. The Yukon provides 12. We're actually kind of behind in a lot of our employment standards. I know there was a huge debate about paid sick days and putting that burden on the employer. We probably couldn't jump to 14 paid sick days right away. There would need to be some sort of government support, but as the Member for Frame Lake noted, right now, the federal government has a program. There is an appetite. The federal government has been reaching out to the provinces and territories to find a way for Canada to get paid sick leave. We're kind of in this tension, this roadblock where no one wants to go first, but I think this is something our government needs to take on and be a champion for, that there is some sort of path to paid sick leave, whether that is, as the Member for Great Slave mentions, an emergency fund that people can access from government; or the way vacation pay works, is it's taken off your paycheque and then banked and then you access that leave that we mandate through the Employment Standards Act.
There are different ways to get to paid sick days, but the legislation that was brought forward is, I guess, okay. We probably should have passed this months ago, when people actually needed their leave much sooner during the pandemic, and I guess the government kind of failed on the opportunity to find a path forward for paid sick leave. I know there are people right now who are hiding the fact that they're sick and they are still going to work because they can't afford to take paid sick days, and that is a risk to all of our public health and safety. The fact that we're now, a year into this pandemic, asking the government to go and find a way to solve this problem just means it was an unambitious bill in the first place. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories provide a response to the recommendations contained in this report within 120 days. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Thank you, committee. Do you agree that you have concluded consideration of Committee Report 12-19(2), Report on the Review of Bill 20, An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. We have concluded consideration of Committee Report 12-19(2), Report on the Review of Bill 20, An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act. Thank you, committee. We will just take a five-minute break.
---SHORT RECESS
I now call Committee of the Whole back to order. Committee, we have agreed to consider Bill 20, An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act. I will ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment to introduce the bill.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I am here today to present Bill 20, An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act. I wish to thank the Standing Committee on Social Development for its thoughtful review and collaboration on this bill. Thanks to the valuable insight of the committee and its staff, in cooperation with departmental representatives, the bill as amended achieves a desired balance between increased public transparency and the operational requirements of the Employment Standards Office.
This bill seeks to amend the Employment Standards Act to include two provisions that will provide protection to NWT workers and flexibility to employers during the COVID-19 pandemic and any future emergency. The first provision, emergency leave, provides job protection to NWT workers by allowing workers to access unpaid leave when they are unable to perform their duties because of an emergency, such as the ongoing public health emergency. This provision will not only encourage workers to comply with public health best practices but will also allow the NWT to meet its commitments to the Government of Canada under the Safe Restart Agreement and allow NWT workers to access the recovery benefits under the Government of Canada's COVID-19 Response Measures Act.
The second provision will provide flexibility to NWT employers by including an exception to the requirement to provide notice of group termination, in line with the notice periods set out in the act, when an unforeseeable event or circumstance beyond an employer's control occurs that prevents the employer from respecting the notice period in the act. Employers will still be required to provide notice of group termination to the employment standards officer and any applicable union as soon as possible, and employees will retain their entitlements to individual termination notice or pay in lieu of notice.
I am pleased to bring forward these amendments that will both strengthen worker protection and provide flexibility for employers and which are consistent with actions taken by other jurisdictions in response to the pandemic. This concludes my opening remarks, and I would be pleased to answer any questions that Members may have regarding Bill 20. 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. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Having just introduced Committee Report 12-19(2) a short time ago, I have no additional comments on Bill 20 at this time. Again, I wish to thank committee, the stakeholders that provided valuable feedback as well as all Regular Members who participated in the committee's review of this bill. Individual Members may have additional comments or questions at this time for the Minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Minister, would you like to bring witnesses into the Chamber?
Yes, I would.
Thank you. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber. Minister, please introduce your witnesses.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Today, we have Ms. Haley Mathisen, manager, employment standards, on your left, and Ms. Laura Jeffrey, legislative counsel with the Department of Justice, on the right. Thank you.
Thank you, and welcome. I will now open the floor to general comments on Bill 20. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I'm still concerned about the group termination notice provisions in the bill, but I would like to ask the Minister whether there were any public consultations in preparing the bill. Thank you.
Thank you. Minister.
Thank you. No.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks. Can the Minister provide an explanation as to why there was no public consultation in preparing the bill? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister.
Thank you. In response to the pandemic, the department decided to implement measures that exist in virtually all other jurisdictions to assist residents and businesses. It wasn't something that required extensive public consultation at the time because these measures are fairly clear-cut across Canada, and time was of the essence, as well, despite the fact that I know that this bill seems to be coming in late, considering the situation. Thank you.
