I thank the Minister for his commitment to look into this area and figure out how we can plug this loophole. It is one that benefits some of the most disadvantaged people in our territory, who are single mothers.

Another shortcoming I pointed out was the difficulty in collecting payments from the self-employed. I will remind the Minister that maintenance payments we collect very often lift the cost of social assistance off the public purse. It is worth making an effort here, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister commit to having his maintenance enforcement people sit down with the tax department experts and make a report to standing committee on possible improvements?

Naturally, Mr. Speaker, we are always interested in improving the system; however, sometimes there are loopholes that cannot be plugged as the result of Charter or other privacy concerns.

We are talking about people who are self-employed, so I do not see how the Charter concerns relate there. I would ask the Minister, when he is looking at how to plug the loophole of finding out who is employed, that he include the people who are self-employed.

Another sort of antiquated portion of this problem is that remittances are forwarded by cheque in the mail; two things which will disappear in our lifetime, Mr. Speaker. We need to tighten up the time frames and methods on these payments. I am told that a change in regulations would make that happen. Will the Minister commit to looking at how to speed up payment?

Yes, without a doubt, it is difficult often to make collections of any kind from the self-employed because they are obviously working for themselves. For that reason, it is difficult often to obtain the kind of information the enforcement office needs to make collection of arrears. With respect to the other matter, clearly we should look into a faster method of getting payment to the creditors.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I hope that I can take that as a commitment that the Minister will look into making the payments faster.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, we recently heard a report of a local woman being shortchanged on an NWT court-ordered support payment because a BC court lowered the amount of money payable under the order. Now, NWT payment levels are set with an eye, of course, to the cost of living here, so a payee's income goes down in BC. It seems to me that it is wrong that a court there should lower the amount owed under an NWT judgment. My question is: will the Minister commit to consulting with his BC Justice Minister colleague to eliminate this provision in their law? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, payments under court orders are always subject to recalculation. In fact, we are attempting to develop a child support recalculation service that will avoid the necessity of going back to court in every case. Courts, however, always have the right to make changes to payments, and really, that is within their jurisdiction and responsibility. I do not think I could have any influence over that, particularly the courts of British Columbia.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement, I talked about funding towards the anti-poverty initiatives for the GNWT. I would like to ask the Minister responsible for the anti-poverty, the Minister of Health and Social Services, a couple of questions.

The GNWT is committed to compiling a broad set of social indicators to measure its progress on the Working Together action plan. Separate from individual departments' monitoring and accountability plans, how will the GNWT measure and report on its overall success in combatting poverty? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have already talked about this a couple of times during this particular sitting. One of the challenges we have is that we do not have a truly defined definition of what "poverty" is in the Northwest Territories, which does make it hard to evaluate any of the work that we are doing against it. We have made a commitment to work with our stakeholders to find a definition.

At the same time, during our last anti-poverty roundtable, the department did present a number of criteria that we are going to consider monitoring and evaluating to help us determine success. We have got a lot of feedback from the participants on things we should be looking at, and that work is being evaluated now so that it could be brought to the advisory group to see if we could bring those criteria down so we could actually have some solid things to evaluate. That work will help us evaluate success going forward, but there are a couple of things that need to be done. The description or the definition is certainly one of them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In the GNWT, which Minister in what department is responsible for tackling and coordinating the various government initiatives that fall under Working Together?

There are a number of Ministers who have responsibility for the individual action items that are included within our anti-poverty documents, the GNWT's Anti-Poverty Action Plan. My role is to continue to work with stakeholders to get this information out, and to remind Ministers of their obligations under this strategic framework, which includes five areas in supporting children and families; promoting healthy living; ensuring safe and affordable housing; making our communities sustainable; and providing an integrated continuum of services. Mr. Speaker, we work together to make that a reality.

What new, not continuing, actions or initiatives have come out of the most recent Anti-Poverty Round Table?

The priority of the most recent roundtable was to actually develop the evaluation criteria that we will use going forward, and the conversation around a definition came up again. That is our goal in that group, is to share information on different projects that are happening, to share good ideas so that people can take those good ideas back to the regions. The main activity coming out of that is let's get this evaluation criteria in place; let's start evaluating the great success that is out there today from the NGOs, from the Aboriginal governments, from the community governments, as well as from the GNWT.

Masi. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement I talked about all 14 departments working together. How does the GNWT's vision for reducing and eliminating poverty in the NWT include a plan for eliminating silos between the departments? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we've been hearing about silos for a number of years, and it's certainly a pet peeve of mine; I've raised it as a Regular Member on multiple occasions.

One of the things that's being done to help us break down some of the silos is we actually have some interdepartmental deputy minister committees that are actually tasked with making sure that they're working together on shared files, that they're not duplicating efforts, that they're working for a common goal. They have opportunities to discuss the different pillars that were identified in the framework, as well as the initiatives and work being undertaken on a number of the different priority areas across the Government of the Northwest Territories; for example, mental health and addictions, Justice and Education are clearly partners with Health and Social Services all in an attempt to break down the silos and work together.

Do I believe that all the silos are gone? No, absolutely not, but we are working in the right direction to start breaking these down. I'd say over the last eight years we've seen a number of these silos start to fracture and come apart and work starting to happen together, which I think is a good thing for the residents of the Northwest Territories.

Masi. Member for Frame Lake.

Merci, Monsieur le President. My question is for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. Earlier today I spoke about the importance of moving forward with our mandate commitment of developing air quality regulations. Can the Minister tell us how many submissions were received on the engagement materials for air quality regulations that were put out last year? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, ENR, we've received 29 formal responses; 10 from the Aboriginal governments and 19 were from stakeholders. We are currently processing the feedback that we heard and, based on feedback received from the parties, we're conducting some additional legislative and legal analysis and technical research on select items in the framework. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks to the Minister for that response. Does the department intend to respond to all the concerns and issues that were raised and to do so in a transparent fashion, maybe through a table of responses or some other mechanism, as I recommended in my submission?