Julian Morse

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the NWT Human Rights Commission recently presented its 20222023 Annual Report to the Standing Committee on Government Operations. In keeping with trends noted in previous reports, the commission noted that disabilities were the basis for 59 percent of complaints brought before them. The commission went on to highlight that there is a gap between the National Building Code standards for accessibility and an organization's responsibility to provide accessible spaces and accommodation under the NWT Human Rights Act.

In past responses to commission...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll leave with a comment, and that is just that, you know, I see the business plan as a live document. I know that there's going to be updates brought to it every year. And so I just hope that Cabinet and the Premier can kind of work with the Council of Leaders, identify some targets that we're going to work towards so we can be focused in implementation of our priorities. And I'll just keep hammering back on that focus item we if we're not focused, if we're trying to do everything, I think it's going to be much harder to achieve our goals. So that's my comments for now...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for the answer. So I think the Minister's touched upon something important there, and that is that the communities currently the way the plan is written, communities can come for reimbursement but, Mr. Speaker, this doesn't get at the issue of the costs of capacity building for communities to respond to these emergencies. So communities are in a position right now where they are taking on responsibility that I don't think was completely clear that they needed to take on. I think that that was very clear during the wildfire season last year...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, how is the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs proposing to deal with the lack of capacities communities have to deal with the increasing number of emergencies within their boundaries? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for your indulgence in allowing us an extra kind of to finish up our statements. I will try to be quick like I was yesterday.

So I left off on ITI and speaking to the economic vision. And just a few thoughts on that. I think I would like to see a timeline. I'd like to see that timeline be short and towards the beginning of this Assembly as opposed to toward the end. If we need to develop a vision, if we need to be implementing a vision, I want us to be implementing that vision, you know, today, and if not today, as quickly as possible, because I think if we're...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I think that my last question I'd like to say let's imagine a scenario where a community comes to MACA this summer and says, we don't have the capacity to host other communities, but other communities' local EMOs are saying they're going to be evacuating to that community. So how is MACA going to manage that situation if a community is telling them we don't have the capacity to host?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I'm happy to hear that MACA is there to kind of help communities identified. But in the interim, we're in a situation where there is a bit of a gap. So, Mr. Speaker, how is MACA coordinating with communities for the current fire season and ensuring existing gaps, particularly related to hosting evacuees, are addressed in the shortterm while we work on these longer term solutions?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, MACA has recently released a new emergency plan, which seeks to better clarify roles and responsibilities for the GNWT, NGOs, and municipalities during emergencies and evacuations. I appreciate the department's work on this, and having read through the plan, I acknowledge that it is clear about roles and responsibilities; however, in terms of current reality, I think there is still a fair bit of work to do to figure out the fine details of how this plan will work on the ground, particularly in relation to local emergency management organizations. I also...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, let me just get organized here.

So, yeah, I'm going to try and keep it to ten minutes but similar to the Member for Yellowknife North, I mean, we are talking about a very large document so it's hard to go through all my comments on it in such a short period of time. But I want to speak kind of generally to it and then speak to some of the things that I would have liked to see in there and maybe some things that I would like to advocate to be put in there.

So, first of all, have we established measurable targets? I think it's a bit of a mixed bag. There are areas where...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I would like some further detail on what the GNWT is doing to support the college in showing their commitment to seeing this project through to success.