R.J. Simpson

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise the House that the honourable Member for Thebacha, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, will be absent from the House today and tomorrow for the Canadian Council of Forests Ministers meeting in Cranbrook, British Columbia.

Thank you. And the Member for Yellowknife North stole my thunder a bit. I was going to say that deleting over $200,000 from the budget does not give us the ability to hire people in the regions. So just so everyone's clear who might be reading Hansard or watching this, this is actually reducing the ability to do what the Member is saying. So it's a bit backwards. I just want to make sure that the Member himself is actually aware that this is a deletion and that taking money away does not somehow allow us to hire more people. So just for everyone's information, I just wanted to add to that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, in terms of the specific numbers for food banks, I will have to get back to the Member. But as I stated, there is funding through the antipoverty grant and other areas where we do provide support. But I can commit to getting that information. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So currently, the federal government is undertaking an internal review of the Nutrition North program, and so we're waiting to hear what comes of that. But I can tell you that there is constant advocacy to the federal government regarding the Nutrition North program. It was spoken about in this House many times by the former Premier. I'm sure it'll be on future meeting agendas when I meet with the Minister of northern affairs as well. And so this is an area where there's obviously significant interest across the North. Is it a perfect program? Of course not. But I know...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to recognize one of my constituents, Ms. Colette Langlois, the current ombud of Northwest Territories, and I want to thank her for her service and for establishing the Office of the Ombud in Hay River. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. With me, I have Charlene Doolittle, deputy minister of the Department of Justice. And James Bancroft, director of corporate services. Thank you.

Thank you. So I leave OROGO alone unless it's been a while and it's time to look at their budget. And so I'm happy to look at the budget again, and committee is free to defer this activity as well if that is the wish. Thank you

Thank you. There is a senior management position in Yellowknife that is being cut. So it should make the might make the Member happy but it's an assistant director position at headquarters. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, we do run into issues with I would say the biggest bottleneck is with the French translation. We are required to translate all of our legislation into French. And to be a French legal drafter, you need to be fluent in French, obviously, and also a trained lawyer and also one of the very few trained lawyers who is interested in drafting legislation. And so it's a very narrow subset of lawyers who are available for that, and they are in high demand. And so when there's slow issues with the drafting, that is usually where we find them. There are also other issues with, you know...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There's no hard feelings if Members don't want to provide questions in advance or give Ministers a heads up about what they might be speaking about. Since my very first day as an MLA, I've been very strong on the topic of MLA independence. As a Regular Member or as an MLA representing my constituents, I don't allow anyone to tell me what to do except my constituents. And I'm not telling the Regular Members what to do, and if I tried I wouldn't expect them to listen to me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.