This is page numbers 5575 - 5600 of the Hansard for the 18th Assembly, 3rd Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was work.

Topics

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Julie Green

Julie Green Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. The Minister received valuable feedback at her forum on how to improve the Income Assistance Program. There were dozens of suggestions, and clearly there is not time to work on them all. My question is: what are the Minister's priorities to improve the Income Assistance Program in the short term? Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Caroline Cochrane

Caroline Cochrane Range Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The MLA is absolutely correct. There is not enough time to do them all. I would love to be able to do them all, and I cannot, so what we have done is, just as when I had the housing portfolio we had done the short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals, that is the process that we are in now. We will be sharing that with the MLAs and the standing committee within the next couple of weeks, and also the NGOs, because I do believe in "nothing about us without us." It was their meeting. We have been keeping them engaged right through.

The short-term goals that we are really focusing on right now, and we will be providing a full Minister's statement tomorrow, actually, are really around the communications. People are feeling that they did not know what their rights were, that the forms were too cumbersome, that they did not know their right to appeal, the programs, et cetera, things like that, so we are just doing up a new participant handbook. We actually hired an outside consultant to come in and help us streamline some of the forms, to make sure that they are appropriate, that we are only asking the information we need instead of things we do not need.

We are also really working on our relationship with the NGOs, too. It's important to note, Mr. Speaker, that the NGOs stated that this is the first time that some of them had ever been consulted on income support. My own experience in the NGOs, I cannot remember ever being invited to a meeting where NGOs were asked what their experiences were. We committed actually that, every six months, we would provide a forum that NGOs and clientele can actually provide input into the Minister, and I think that is a huge step.

Julie Green

Julie Green Yellowknife Centre

Thank you to the Minister for that response. I am glad to hear that the paperwork is going to be more plain-language. Is there any thought to actually testing this new paperwork with a client group to ensure that it is meeting the goals that they are hoping?

Caroline Cochrane

Caroline Cochrane Range Lake

Honestly, I had never thought about that, but consensus government is working together. I think that is a really valuable idea, and so I will implement that, because I think it's important. They are the ones who are actually be utilizing the form. They should be the ones stamping and saying, "This works for me."

Julie Green

Julie Green Yellowknife Centre

I appreciate the Minister being open to that suggestion. One of the things that participants talked about was the need to address issues such as lost paperwork and late payments that come about as a result of that. Can the Minister tell us whether any progress has been made in this area?

Caroline Cochrane

Caroline Cochrane Range Lake

Thank you to the MLA for reminding me. Actually, that was one of the bigger concerns that I had. If people are getting, for example, their utility bills in and it's our fault that we are late and then we are not paying their late fees and they are getting late fees, that is a sin on our side, in my opinion. We are not giving a lot of money to people. We are not giving any money for late fees, so it's coming out of their food or their clothing allowance, and I am not okay with that. We have already implemented that, if the error is on our side, we will be paying late fees. If the error is on the clientele side because they have not got the paperwork in time to us, then the clientele will still be responsible. However, any time that it's our error because of paperwork or not being on time, we will be covering those late fees effective already, so I can say effective immediately, although it's already implemented.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Julie Green

Julie Green Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister's genuine efforts to reform this troubled system. I am wondering, in the area of the Income Assistance Steering Committee, this may be the one the Minister referenced earlier. People at the forum in December really wanted to see this committee be created to address ongoing issues. Is this the committee she referred to earlier in her answer?

Caroline Cochrane

Caroline Cochrane Range Lake

Absolutely, Mr. Speaker, that is the committee we are talking to. It will be the NGOs, and, of course, we will be bringing in clientele as well with that. Like I said, one of my strongest philosophies is "nothing about us without us," and so that was an easy commitment. It's an embarrassment on the behalf of Education, Culture and Employment that we have not done that in the past, so we learned from our history. We learned from our mistakes, and, moving forward, we will be engaging them on a regular basis, twice a year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.

Kieron Testart

Kieron Testart Kam Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I first learned of the intergovernmental agreement and the co-drafting process, I had some small anxiety about how that process would interact with this institution, but I can safely say, now that I have seen it, it is not incompatible. In fact, it's very much complementary. I would like to ask the Honourable Premier: what feedback on the co-drafting process has he received to date from the GNWT officials who have been working with the Indigenous governments to co-draft legislation? Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. The Honourable Premier.

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What I have been hearing is it's been working quite well. The intergovernmental forum, we are in kind of a push-pull situation, where our Aboriginal government partners are saying that we are having too much legislation or it's going too fast on the one hand and, on the other hand, our colleagues here in this House have been asking for more and more legislation. We are kind of in a unique push-pull situation, where I guess we all have to manage it to get things done.

Kieron Testart

Kieron Testart Kam Lake

Perhaps my desire was for a more technical response, but that is a fair point. We do need to work together on this, and we do need to understand the flow of legislation, especially when we have Indigenous governments partnering on this legislation. Many of those governments have come before standing committee in our review of some of these laws and have asked to continue their collaborative role in co-drafting not only the bills, but the regulations arising from these new acts, should they pass. My understanding is that some departments have reached out and started this work of the terms of reference for co-drafting legislation, so I am wondering if the government as a whole will continue this meaningful collaboration and implement policies and procedures to ensure that regulations are co-drafted on all bills respecting alliance and resources or all laws respecting alliance and resources.

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

As with many things, this has been an evolving process. At one time, government did all of the drafting of legislation, and then we got into settlement of land claims and self-government. In those cases, we had Aboriginal governments that participated in the drafting of legislation. I think it was further advanced where, as a condition of devolution, we agreed to an intergovernmental process whereby we would work with Aboriginal governments that signed on to devolution for specific legislation or, as we called it, "mirror legislation" to develop made-in-the-North legislation.

Also, in specific cases, specific legislation, for example the Wildlife Act, which took about 25 years to develop and bring to fruition, and also Species at Risk, where we started out with consultation, at the end, it involved all of the Aboriginal governments and their lawyers. I think it's still evolving. With a lot of the changes that are happening in the federal government, I think we are also taking a wait-and-see where they are going with a lot of their initiatives, as well.

Kieron Testart

Kieron Testart Kam Lake

This is very much a good-news story, and I think the federal government could learn a lot from what this government has put in place. The question remains around this issue of regulations. The last thing I think our partners want to see is kind of an ad hoc approach where some bills have co-development regulations and some bills do not, so can the government commit to creating a common approach to co-development of regulations across this suite of laws and regulations and basically any bill that is co-drafted, that the regulations that come forth have some degree of meaningful engagement with Indigenous partners, and can we standardize that as a policy across government?

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

It's getting kind of late in the day for this Legislative Assembly. We have been participating with the federal government on the development of their Indigenous rights framework, which we are now aware that that will be pushed back until the next federal government. We are in a situation where we are now doing a review of our Indigenous government relations, and the purpose of this review will be to identify best practices and areas where we can improve our Indigenous relations across the government. Our expectation is that we will complete it before the 18th Assembly, and our expectation is the findings will be made available to the 19th Assembly to further shape and strengthen the Government of the Northwest Territories' Indigenous government relations.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.

Kieron Testart

Kieron Testart Kam Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Honourable Premier. That is good news, and I look forward to seeing the results of that finding. I still think that we have undertaken a process, and I do not think it's premature to start developing policy around that process that is already under way.

My final question is: many of the IGOs, Indigenous government organizations, that participated in this process shared with the standing committee that, for their engagement to be meaningful, they need to have the capacity to actually engage the legislation that is before them. In many cases, they did not have that capacity and could only focus on one or two bills when there were so many bills to consider. Is the government considering any capacity-strengthening programs to address these concerns?

Bob McLeod

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

Yes, we did hear that lack of capacity and requests for more resources very loud and clear. I should point out, as the Member has said, we have been engaged in collaborative legislative development with the Northwest Territories' Indigenous governments as part of the evolution of the devolution-related legislation, and this has included early discussions to inform key elements of legislation and sharing drafts to ensure that their perspectives are understood and incorporated.

Collaborative development, when we are doing that work, we have to remember that, although we work collaboratively with Indigenous governments, we also consult with those same Indigenous governments to ensure that their Aboriginal rights are not being adversely impacted. At the end of the day, the final decisions on NWT legislation rest with this Legislative Assembly, so, with what the Member is suggesting, that is an area that we have to innovate to make it happen. In the past, when we put into effect land claims legislation, we have had to work with the Aboriginal governments who primarily wrote their legislation, and we had to make some special arrangements in this Legislative Assembly so that it would go through. However, we have and will continue to bring to the table the perspective of Indigenous governments in this area. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

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

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh

Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. In my Member's statement, I talked about cannabis and alcohol. My main reason for making the Member's statement is many constituents have come forward to see me during my whole time as MLA and complain about the bootleggers. I have a question for the Minister of Finance. I have some questions. My first question is: can the GNWT make laws to limit the purchase and possession of alcohol? Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Jackson Lafferty

Masi. Minister of Finance.