Masi. Minister responsible for the Status of Women

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The reason that the accomplishments that we’ve done with addressing with getting more women into politics wasn’t in the mandate speech was because this Cabinet recognized that today is International Women’s Day. We decided that it was important enough that we wanted to denote a whole Minister's speech to this issue. It was decided to not put it in there and actually provide a whole Minister's speech to address it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you to the Minister. It was kind of an interesting explanation. I would encourage you to report on that good work, and you did, but it should be in the report, too, to tell the public that we’re continuing to do that. I do recognize the efforts of the Minister and my colleague from Yellowknife Centre in conducting that work.

One of the three specific activities as stated in the mandate is as follows: we will support a communications campaign to increase the participation of women in politics. Can the Minister give specifics on when that campaign will be launched, and mindful that we’re only two years away from the next election and anyone planning to run should be starting their work now?

The communication campaign, we’re just in the middle of developing it now. The reason that we’re putting a little bit of still working on it is because we recognize that, when we are doing the campaign schools, that we are only addressing actually to get women into the Legislative Assembly. We are now looking at, once we do a workshop in Inuvik, we will be revising our whole campaign school so that we can address more women so that they can actually run not only for the Legislative Assembly but for Aboriginal governments, for municipal governments, hamlets, etc. Once we’ve decided our format and how we’re going to address that, then we will be rolling out a full communication plan to address all of the issues.

Thanks again to the Minister. That’s very helpful to hear that. I appreciate her efforts. Part of the work of Elections NWT is to promote and increase participation in the electoral process including participation of women. How is our government collaborating with Elections NWT or even other organizations to increase the number of women running for elected office?

Actually, we do collaborate quite closely. We do have our electoral officer attend the campaign schools with us. We will have the Department of Justice actually attending with us also to give us some feedback on where we need to move more and in what direction. We are working quite closely with the Status of Women on this issue. We are trying to be as inclusive as possible with the whole direction of getting more women in leadership in politics.

Masi. Member for Frame Lake.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. It’s all good news today from the Minister. I appreciate her work on this. I’m just wondering if -- and I’m sorry, I didn’t give her a heads up on this one -- she’s been very thorough in answering everything else. What sort of specific funding, though, have we identified in the 2017-18 budget for these efforts as part of our mandate? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For the first campaign school, we gave $15,000 to the Status of Women, which was what they asked for, to do their campaign school in Hay River. We have just given $25,000 to the Status of Women to do the campaign school in Inuvik. We haven’t gotten a financial figure out of the communications campaign yet. Once we finish that, then we will know what we are looking at, and we are planning, as stated in my Minister’s statement, that we will be doing more campaign schools throughout, right until the next election. At that time, we will be allocating more monies to that.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Finance regarding sole-source contracting. In his October 14, 2016 replies to my oral questions, I asked if the Minster would commit to carrying out an evaluation of the sole-source contract awarding practice and performance, a request to which he agreed. Can the Minister give an update on the status of that review? Thank you.

Masi. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct: I did commit to providing a formal review. The review is a bit behind schedule right now, and we are looking at providing something to Members in the May-June session. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you to the Minister for that response. I wonder if the Minister can commit to providing the draft terms of reference or, in fact, the final terms of reference for this review to the Government Operations Committee before the close of this session.

Those are available, and those can be shared. I don’t see that there would be a problem sharing; the work is already ongoing, though, so the terms of reference would just apply to the work that is ongoing. If there is a possibility that I could share them with the Members, then I will look into that.

I appreciate the Minister’s commitment to investigating sharing that. I guess it would have been helpful if he had done that before the review began, so that the Government Operations Committee could provide some oversight in this area, which is their responsibility. I also want to talk about reports. We certainly appreciate seeing sole-source contracting reports on a quarterly basis now. I think that that really walks the talk of transparency. It is my understanding that these reports are actually quite easy to produce, just a matter of selecting particular database fields. I am wondering if it would be possible to also increase the reporting on contracts under $5,000? They are now only produced annually. I am wondering if they could be done more often.

I take the Member’s concern about the terms of reference, and going before government operations before we actually went out, but we are elected to do the work. We go out and do the work, and we are held accountable by the Members' office for the work that we do. Sometimes we need to get out there and actually get to work right away, instead of holding it up with bringing everything forward to government operations. Having said that, the Member’s question was contracts under $5,000, or over $5,000? I do know that the contracts over $5,000 document is tabled once a year, I believe, with all different types of contracts, and they are sole source negotiated. I am not sure if her question was under $5,000. It is something that I would have to investigate. The Member is absolutely correct: as the Department of Finance, we are posting all of the sole-source contracts on our website, and they are reported on a quarterly basis, and we try to ensure that these reports are updated within 30 days of the end of the quarter. It is easily accessible, and in the spirit of transparency, we are putting everything on the website, so people out there will know which are sole source.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the importance of giving the terms of reference to government operations proactively is that the value of all the contracts left by the government is very substantial. It is a significant piece of business. I understand that you need to get on with the business of governing, and we want you to get on with the business of governing, but I think on an issue this size, it would have been useful for the committee to have contributed its oversight to this issue. I say that, as somebody who is not a member of that committee, that I know that they do good work, and they would have done it in this case, as well. To clarify my question from the previous one, I was wondering if it would be possible to produce reports on contracts under $5,000, as often as you do the sole-source contracts. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is correct. Since April 1 to December of this year, there has been a substantial number of sole-source contracts. I believe there are about 290 of them. On the contracts under $5,000, I would have to look into that, because a lot of that are corporate credit cards and such. I think it will be a substantive piece of work to try and pull all of that information together. I will do some investigating. If I have to have a conversation with the Member on the number of transactions, which I think would actually be almost as large as the tabled document of contracts over $5,000, I will do some investigating. I will have a conversation with the Member.

I would like to remind Members to keep your preambles short, and your questions short and precise. Also, keep answers precise and to the point. Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, the Minister of Lands spoke in his Minister’s statement on what the departments have been working on to serve residents, in the way that best reflects the Northwest Territories’ interests and priorities. It talks about Lands and bringing the two Lands acts together. One of the things they talked about was reviewing --

Member, what is your question?

That is good. We will get to the question. Sorry, Mr. Speaker. My question is: what factors do the Department of Lands use to come up with the rate of 10 per cent to charge on land leases? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.