R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm here today to present Bill 47: An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act, No. 2.

Bill 47 adds the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30th to the list of statutory holidays listed in Part 3 of the Northwest Territories’ Employment Standards Act, and includes consequential amendments to the Interpretation Act and the current Public Services Holiday Order to ensure alignment across legislation in the NWT and extend the holiday for members of the territorial public service going forward.

I am pleased to bring forward these amendments to support the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So this Assembly, it's getting near the end. This is probably our last kick at the can to get things done. And so if there's going to be a school in Enterprise, it would be a future Minister. But I spoken I've had conversations with representatives from Enterprise. I hear their passion. I hear their desire to have their children stay home, be educated in the community, and I want to continue to work with them to see that come to fruition.

Part of the issues are with the Education Act, the way that education bodies are created, and the way schools are created, and the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd be happy to meet with them. I know they have been busy lately. They've been providing evacuation services for a lot of the residents in Hay River. But if they're ready to meet or whenever they're ready to meet, I'm happy to meet with them. Thank you.

Thank you. So Education, Culture and Employment oversees this act, and as such we undertook engagement on whether or not this day should be a statutory holiday in the Northwest Territories.

The Department of the Executive and Indigenous Affairs is going to be leading phase 2 of the engagement, and they are preparing an engagement plan. They will be engaging with Indigenous governments, residential school survivors, and so on, to determine how to properly commemorate the date. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And if the Member doesn't like the "Mackenzie River," he can use any of the other six official names. The Mackenzie River, in 2015, wasn't renamed per se but there were names added to it. So a single geographical feature can have multiple names, and they are all official, each one as official as the next. And so the Mackenzie River does have a number of official names. Can be used in official documents. So that work has already happened. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We can do what we want with government owned infrastructure when it comes to naming. We don't have to ask anyone's permission. We pay the bills, we can name buildings what we want to name them.

Any change in name would be tied to some sort of a retrofit of the building, some other changes. There are plans to look at how we can perhaps fund the museum differently. We're working on a revenue study. We expect some renovations, which are required for the building and so any changes would be part and parcel of that. But I foresee that in the not too distant future we'll...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know in Nunavut they started wearing body cameras maybe a year ago, a couple years ago, and they have been testing them out in cold weather to see how they work. It's my understanding that at some point, body cameras will likely roll out for RCMP across the country. And so at that point, you know, then it wouldn't be mandatory.

There are a number of things we have to work out the technical issues, the storage, as in the data storage, and so there's some things that need to be put in place, very expensive things, before we can start doing that. But I expect that at...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the RCMP are encouraged to complete the Living Well Together training. They are also required to take training called so there's a number of different training opportunities, or rather requirements. One is a Trauma Informed Approach. Another is Cultural Awareness and Humility. Another is United Against Racism. And another is Bias Awareness. And I will say that over the last number of years, the amount of training, particularly related to this subject, has increased. And it's increased to the point where we've added new RCMP officers in the territory because we have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And we have the Mackenzie Mountains. There's Mackenzie Islands, Mackenzie Island, another Mackenzie Island. And they're all named after different people. So we have quite a few different features in the territory. We are 1.3 million square kilometres after all, and we can't do everything at once. So we are not in the process of actively pursuing community support for changing names because that has to come from the community. If that came from the community, we would be happy to do that as per the policy.

And I will point out there are over 400 Indigenous names that the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I want to commend the Member for the strong antislavery stance he took in his Member's statement.

The GNWT isn't the one who puts forward name changes for a geographical place. We have a geographical name policy, and it states that those changes come from the community. So we actually have received a request from the community to change the name of the Great Slave Lake.

We work with the Geographic Names Board of Canada on that, and there is a process. It involves community consultation, consultation with Indigenous governments, and we are undertaking that now. So the...