Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Any abstentions? The motion is carried. Bill 89 has had second reading.
Carried
Second reading of bills. Consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters, Bill 23, 29, and 68, Committee Report 47, 49, 5019(2), Minister's Statement 26419(2), Tabled Document 68119(2), and Tabled Document 69419(2).
I now call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of committee? Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Madam la Presidente. Committee wishes to consider Bill 68, Tabled Document 69419(2), Committee Report 5019(2), Committee Report 4719(2). Mahsi, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. We will take a recess.
SHORT RECESS
Committee, we've agreed to consider Bill 68, An Act to Amend the Child Day Care Act. I will ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment to introduce the bill. Minister
Thank you, Madam Chair. I am here today to present Bill 68, An Act to Amend the Child Day Care Act.
The Child Day Care Act defines how children should be cared for in facilities outside of their homes in the NWT. The Act and its corresponding regulations set minimum standards for the quality, care, instruction, and supervision of children.
In December 2021, the GNWT signed the CanadaNWT Canadawide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement, in which the federal government pledged to provide additional funding to reduce barriers and transform the early learning and child care system in the NWT. The agreement and action plan focused on making child care more affordable for families, developing a qualified early childhood workforce, and establishing a strong basis for accountability.
Amendments to the Child Day Care Act are required to fully implement this agreement and meet the enhanced accountability and reporting measures required by Canada.
Bill 68 proposes a limited set of amendments to the Act that will
Provide the authority to establish a certification process and wage grid for early childhood educators in the NWT;.
Increase inclusion and demographic reporting measures;.
Establish cost control measures, including maximum fees charged to families;.
Introduce enhanced protection for the rights of families, including a complaints process; and
Update and clarify language in the act.
I wish to thank the Standing Committee on Social Development for their review and collaboration on this important initiative, including the six motions to amend and agreed to during the clausebyclause review. This concludes my opening remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Would you like to bring witnesses?
Sergeantatarms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.
Minister, please introduce your witnesses.
Thank you. I have John MacDonald, deputy minister of education, culture and employment. And Christina Duffy, director of legislation division with the Department of Justice.
Welcome. I will now turn to the chair of the Standing Committee on Social Development, the committee that reviewed the bill, for any opening comments to Bill 68. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, Bill 68, An Act to Amend the Child Day Care Act, received second reading in the Legislative Assembly on November 3rd, 2022, and was referred to the Standing Committee on Social Development for review.
Bill 68 does not address the existing challenges of the Northwest Territories' early learning and child care sector or fix the damaged relationship between the sector and government. It does, however, put in place necessary basic rules, such as a certification process for educators, and allows the Northwest Territories to catch up with the other jurisdictions in this sector.
In the committee's review period, committee received nine written submissions and six verbal presentations. This enabled committee to have a thorough understanding of how Bill 68 affects child care operators and northern families. As a result, the committee was pleased to work with the department on several amendments to strengthen this bill for those it impacts.
The clausebyclause review of Bill 68 was held on March 1st, 2023. The committee proposed seven motions. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment concurred with six of the seven proposed motions.
I would like to thank the committee for its work on the review of the bill 68. Individual Members may have additional comments or questions. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. I will now open the floor to general comments on Bill 68. Does committee agree that there are no general comments on Bill 68?
Agreed.
Can we proceed to a clausebyclause review of the bill?
Agreed.
Committee, we will defer the bill number and title until after consideration of the clauses. Please turn to page 1 of the bill.
Clause 1, does committee agree?
Agreed.
---clauses 1 through 12 inclusive approved
Clause 13, does committee agree? Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that Clause 13 of Bill 68 be amended by deleting proposed subclause 19.2(2) and substituting the following:
(2) An operator shall not
Retaliate against a complainant under section 19.1; or
Disclose the identity of a complainant under section 19.1 except as is reasonably required to respond to the complaint.
And, Madam Chair, I request a recorded vote.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion? Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, this is, we feel on the committee, a really important change that needs to be made. Given the small nature of our sorry, the nature of our small towns, I think that it's really quite disingenuous to think that conversation is not going to happen around any sort of complaint or issue that is brought forward. And what not having the ability to speak about the complainant does to the day care provider or the day home provider is that it doesn't it hampers them from being allowed to go and get advice from their peer group. It doesn't allow them to properly be able to defend themselves against any sort of complaint. I think it gives an avenue then should they do inadvertently disclose someone's name, it gives another avenue for retaliation, especially in a situation where the complaint is actually vexatious and not of an actual nature that's maybe grounded in reality. So we felt that by hampering or by keeping people restricted and sorry, I'm having a hard time articulating myself here today after this week. But that it would add detriment to the providers and not fair. We also wanted them to have the ability to be unhampered should they need to engage legal counsel or any sort of adjudication platform that may come out of a remediation type situation. And it's our understanding from our legal counsel that this does prohibit defendants, or whatever we want to call them, from engaging and telling their legal counsel who exactly is the complainant. So I think rather than set up a situation where people are going to be in violation of the Act because people talk, and it's a small town, I think it's better if we were to make this amendment so that there is some avenue for flexibility in how this is all dealt with. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion? Member for or Minister of ECE.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And this motion was brought forward at the clause by clause, and at that time I did not concur with it. I think there was a bit of, I think, miscommunication between myself and committee in terms of what this actual this clause meant. I think there was a perception that it meant that the complaint itself could not be discussed with anyone. But the issue was the just the identity of the complainant we did not want exposed.
This act or this bill proposes to provide child care providers with information, a summary of the complaint when it is made, which is currently not the process. So this is sort of a give and take. There's additional information going to child care providers, and as such we just want to ensure there's a little more production for families. And this is not something we expect that would come into play very often. The vast majority of cases are, you know, there's the vast majority of complaints are dealt with very quickly. There's many that are found to not be substantiated. Some might be vexatious. And when the complaints are founded, staff go in and they work with the providers to ensure that they can rectify those issues. We don't want things to progress to another level. So, you know, in speaking with some of the committee members, there was examples given of, you know, a new day home operator might be receiving complaints and they want to go and speak to someone who is more experienced about how to, you know, deal with those issues, and there's nothing wrong with that. The issue would be to would be about identifying the assumed complainant because, as was mentioned, it is a small community, and we don't want anyone to be any parents to have a bad reputation that might cause them difficulty in getting child care.
Thank you. Members, the motion is being distributed on to the floor.
The motion to amend the motion under consideration is in order. Members, we will consider the motion to amend the motion under consideration prior to returning to the original motion. I know this is confusing, so we're going to consider the motion that the Minister's put forward before we consider the remainder for the motion that the Member for Kam Lake has put forward.
So at this time, debate should focus on the motion to amend from the Minister of ECE versus the Member for Kam Lake. So I will go to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment to speak to the motion to amend, then we'll allow any other Members an opportunity to speak to that motion. Okay? So Minister of ECE.
Thank you, Madam Chair. So what this motion does is amend the motion to allow for child care centre or day home operators to disclose the identity of a complainant in certain circumstances. And so that would be when they would like to retain legal counsel to help them navigate this complaint, help them deal with the complaint, or alternatively, I recognize that not everyone wants to hire a lawyer. And really, this complaint process is not, you know, that administratively burdensome that you would necessarily need a lawyer. The later appeal process is perhaps the time when you might consider that but for this process, you might not need a lawyer and so there's also the opportunity for the director to authorize an operator to reveal that identity to someone else to assist them deal with this complaint. Thank you.
Thank you. To the motion? Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And I appreciate the willingness of the Minister and the department to try and rectify the issue that we had raised and clearly was listening to what our concerns were. Again, though, this I don't necessarily, though, agree with 3(b) as authorized by the director. And the reason I have concern there is further to what I was saying yesterday about the way that this is going to be set up that it does allow for there to be an arbitrary GNWT employee who is making decisions about people's livelihoods in an industry. And I just don't see that we have a lot of that type of overreach in other departments sorry, or industries, and so I have to question why we would be so prescriptive in one like this. I mean, if we were in the construction industry and somebody was mad at one contractor, there would be nothing to preclude them from speaking about that to others in the industry. So I feel that this is too prescriptive, and, again, it's giving power to a GNWT employee that is not impartial necessarily. I have, I mentioned yesterday, heard complaints about vexatious complaints being followed through from in the department. And that is the perception, I'm not saying whether it is the reality, but that there is an impression that certain people are targeted and therefore how could I in good conscience agree to allow a director to be making this type of decision with no policy or anything or guidance around and no investigative process outlined ahead of time. So for me, I can't support this change. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion? Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I was not part of the committee, and so I'm just trying to catch up on where we're at with this. But I want to note that the act, where it's starting a new complaint process does the director first has to decide whether to even disclose the identity of the complainant to the operator. And I would say in many cases, you probably don't want to do that. And if I'm going to file a complaint against my day home, I'm probably going to ask to remain anonymous. And I know that anonymous complaints processes are often used in other jurisdictions in day homes to protect the identities of people involved. So we're now in a debate where it's after the director has made that analysis in cases where they find it appropriate to disclose the identity with the summary of the complaint, whether then that day home operator can further share that information. And I am sympathetic to the motion that it certainly should be shared with legal counsel. I think they probably have that right regardless, but I don't want to get into that debate. That being said, I appreciate where committee is coming from so I will be abstaining on these motions. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion? Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And thank you very much to the Minister and his desire to meet committee halfway here. But there are still concerns that were raised in committee that this motion does not acknowledge. One of the concerns that was raised by committee was the ability of a complainant to disclose the identity sorry, the ability of a child care provider to disclose the the identity of a complainant to legal counsel or to another person assisting them in defending against the complaint. So while this allows somebody to disclose to a lawyer that they've retained, sometimes people don't always have the dollars to access a lawyer and having somebody have to go back to a director and leave that to the discretion of a director is probably not a natural human behaviour when you are potentially a, you know, a an early in business individual who is simply looking for advice from a peer who works in the industry in order to be able to defend yourself or work through a situation.
And that brings me to my next concern, and a concern that was heard at committee, was really the ability of people to participate in normal human behaviour, which is, especially in the Northwest Territories we often have a very small territory where we're all one community, where people know people who are in the industry who have different skill sets or who are trusted advisors. You know, when we all leave this building, we'll probably call upon some of our colleagues as trusted advisers in our life that will help us through some challenges that we either encounter professionally or personally going forward. And so my concern is that this legislation would actually potentially make natural human behaviour illegal. And so it seems to me that in a sense this clause actually seems to address a fear of unprofessional behaviour and that to me calls into question is unprofessional behaviour illegal? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion?
Question.
Question has been called. All those in oh sorry, no, you didn't request a recorded vote. So all those in favour
Okay, so what we are voting on right now is the amendment that Minister of ECE has made to the motion that Member for Kam Lake put forward. So we're voting on the amendment, okay. So all those in favour of the amendment to the motion? Thank you. All those opposed to the amendment of the motion. All those abstaining?
All right, so the motion is defeated. The motion has been defeated.
Defeated
Members, we will now consider the Member for Kam Lake's motion. To the motion.
Committee, as chair, in case of a tie, I cast the deciding vote. By convention, I vote in a way that allows further debate. So in this case, I vote to defeat the motion to amend the motion as the amendment could be brought forward in further debate in third reading.
All right, so now we will go back to the original motion. To the motion? And this is the motion that was put forward by Member for Kam Lake. To the motion?
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour, please raise your hand so that we can make sure I can count.
The Member for Kam Lake. The Member for Nunakput. The Member for Tu NedheWiilideh. The Member for Monfwi. The Member for Great Slave. The Member for Deh Cho. The Member for Thebacha.
All those opposed, please stand.
The Member for Nahendeh. The Member for Yellowknife South. The Member for Sahtu. The Member for Range Lake. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake. The Member for Yellowknife Centre. The Member for Hay River North.
All those abstaining, please stand.
The Member for Yellowknife North. The Member for Hay River South.
The results of the recorded vote are: seven in favour, seven opposed, and two abstentions.
Committee, as chair, in case of a tie I cast the deciding vote and by convention, I vote in a way that allows for further debate. In this case, I vote to defeat the motion to amend as this amendment could be brought forward for further debate in third reading. Thank you, Members.
Clause 13, does committee agree?
