Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to commend all the people of the Yukon who woke up and will never have to change their clocks ever again. It seems what happens here, there's a bit of a gridlock here where Alberta is looking to doing this once again. BC is, California is, and no one seems to want to move. My question for the Minister of Justice is: can we take the lead and get rid of time change?
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister of Justice.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad I'm still the Minister responsible for "Justice" and not taking on the mantle of "Time." Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to confirm that staff within the Department of Justice are actively involved with their counterparts. We are keeping tabs of what's happening. We're aware of the progress that seems to be taking place in a lot of other jurisdictions, moving away from time changing. I'm not going to stand here today and say that we will take the lead, but I can say the department is right now quite active on this. If there's an opportunity to take the lead, then, we would look at that, but at the moment, we're going to continue to engage and see what is happening with our partners immediately to the south, as well as in other jurisdictions in Canada. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Not quite the answer I was looking for. I recognize one of the barriers to the Northwest Territories doing this is that Alberta is our largest trading partner, and there's a general desire to be on the same time zone as Alberta. One of my concerns is that they're going out and doing this work right now, and I don't want to get left behind where, all of a sudden, we're not caught up to make sure we can implement this change. I guess what I'm looking for is: is the Minister of Justice prepared to commit that, should Alberta change and get rid of the time zone, we will do so as well?
I was also privy to the news articles about the change in the Yukon. I can assure the Member that the Department of Justice is well aware of what's happening and well aware of the need to be reactive now and not later. What I can certainly say at this point is that, should Alberta make a change, we will be in a position to respond very quickly. It's not a response that would be mine alone, and so that's my inability to commit to that here today on the floor, but for whatever assurance I can give, if there's a change, we will not be delayed in our response.
Given that we want to get this right and given that I think there is overwhelming public support to get this done, I mean, based on everyone I've talked to, could the Minister commit that we will begin some formal public engagement, reach out to the relevant stakeholders such as Alberta, such as the airline industry, and start the steps forward to prepare us to make that change?
I am happy to commit and confirm that we will reach out to our legal counterparts in the other jurisdictions. We will reach out to stakeholders such as airlines, such as computer service providers. As far as public engagement, I think I would be a little more hesitant there in that that can mean a lot of different things depending on the nature of the bill. This change would involve a change to regulations. This is not a change that requires a legislative change; it is the Daylight Savings Time Regulations, I think, I'm not sure if that's quite right, so it's a fairly narrow change that would need to take place. That doesn't necessarily or typically require public engagement, but, to the extent that there are stakeholders and relevant stakeholders that we need to engage with, yes, I will commit to making that motion now.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
