Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us if he believes policing in the NWT is conducted with the highest levels of transparency and accountability? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There's varying levels of accountability. I know in jurisdictions in the United States, they elect their sheriffs and you could say that's the ultimate accountability. So we don't have a system like that but we are focusing on ensuring that the RCMP are taking steps to become more transparent and accountable to the public. And I mentioned my policing priorities. One of the other four is accountability and transparency. So I am focusing on this in response to, you know, concerns I've been hearing from people like the Member. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us if he believes policing transparency and accountability should be improved in the NWT; and if so, are there any specific tools at the Minister's disposal that he can utilize to do so? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And you can always get better at being more accountable and more transparent. I think that's true for every entity.

One of the tools that I have are those policing priorities which I mentioned. In addition, there are new initiatives that are likely rolling out in the coming year, such as body-worn cameras. And of course, and I mentioned this before, the Territorial Police Service Agreement has a number of checks and balances and a number of ways to ensure that the RCMP are accountable to the department. And as well, there's countless working groups, meetings, local-level meetings, national-regional meetings, that the government is involved with with the RCMP to ensure that we know what the RCMP is doing and that they are accountable to us and their operations are transparent. But there's the other aspect where the RCMP need to be more transparent to the public, just like we all do. And so to that end, I've had discussions with the commanding officer about taking steps to ensure that the public is more aware of what the RCMP are doing. That said, the RCMP are busy, and I think that, you know, that's reflected in the concerns I hear from around the territory, that they want -- the communities want more RCMP. So while I would like for the RCMP to go out and do a lot more community engagement and meet with people and, you know, hold meetings, the fact is they're busy doing what we pay them to do. So yes, we are working on it, and yes, there are tools, and yes, we are utilizing them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Thebacha.

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us if he has had any significant discussions with the federal minister of public safety about potential solutions to improve transparency and accountability of the RCMP and policing services in general? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't have significant concerns about the transparency and accountability of the RCMP so I haven't had those types of conversations. That said, I do have regular conversations with the commanding officer of G-division; the department has regular conversations as well. So those conversations are ongoing. And noting the -- your comments earlier, I will keep this last remark brief. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.

Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Minister responsible for Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as of January 31st, there are 31 employees on active duty working outside of the territory. That represents about .4 percent of the total work force. The majority -- the vast majority of those, of course, would have been approved by their supervisors prior to this policy taking effect. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of the concerns that I brought forward in my Member's statement is that if these positions are, you know, outside the territory, they could be taking away from residents that are in the Northwest Territories. So of these now 31 positions, can the Minister confirm have they moved away or are they just temporarily away, or is this a precedent that we're setting that could potentially lead to more people leaving the Northwest Territories to work remotely and become residents in other territories and provinces? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the ability to work outside of the territory is meant to be for exceptional purposes only, and "exceptional" is really just that. It's, for example, if you have a child who has to get medical care, specialized medical care for a period of time that is not available here and you need to go care for your child, well, that's pretty exceptional. It is not for people who simply prefer to live somewhere else, who might have family that they'd like to see. It's not a matter of convenience. It is for exceptional purposes only.

And you know, I don't want to pre-empt where the Member might be going, Mr. Speaker, but I would also note that with respect to being outside of a community other than Yellowknife, the policy's actually quite express that this is not a -- that people are not being authorized to have a worm out work arrangement if they live -- if they want to live in Yellowknife and their position is located outside of Yellowknife, that is not authorized under this policy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So thank you to the Minister for her answer and yes, she's reading my mind because she has my questions, but. So I know the intent of this is not to fill GNWT positions with non-NWT residents. It was pretty -- predominantly, you know, a recommendation made by the government OPs committee too to establish this remote work policy for instances of a pandemic where everybody gets sent home, because we didn't have it.

But what steps are being taken to put in place that, you know -- that people aren't moving out of the territory and that employees that are in positions and getting approval that they haven't taken up residence and they actually live and their primary residence is the Northwest Territories? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And Mr. Speaker, the Member's quite right. This certainly speaks to the experience we've all had during COVID-19. But this was something that was considered even before that. It's a direction that a lot of the public service -- sorry, the human resources experts are starting to look at across Canada. We want to be a workplace that is keeping up with the direction of human resources approaches. We want to be a workplace that is considered attractive to bring people here and not so that people will leave and want to have that flexibility for folks who may be outside of a headquarters region or a regional position and who can now work in their home positions. It's the policy and the guidelines that go with it are structured to do just that. People have to be providing their addresses of where they're going to be living, providing photographs of their work site for as much to ensure that they're in a safe position to work with in that position, and that is going to be monitored. If anything, by putting the policy in place like this now, now there actually is some guidelines. It's not a matter of one person or a another who prefers to work down south might get a one-off approval. That's not going to fly anymore because now you have to actually be applying whether or not you fit within this policy as being directed from human resources. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Given the potential impacts of this policy, I believe there needs to be more transparency and oversight.

Will the Minister commit to publishing statistics on remote work policy in the public service annual reports? I'd like to see the reporting on the number of jobs done in a different community and the reasons for it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the public service annual report certainly is one place that we might be able to report on this. I have no concern in saying that we will definitely be able to report back, just as we are today, about the total number of residents who might be working either outside of the territory or who are working in some sort of remote arrangement and whether that is in the public service report or whether somewhere on our website. I will see that it does get published somewhere and inform the Members when we've made that decision as to what's the best place to do that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Sorry, I'm not operating off of paper today.

My first question for the Minister, Mr. Speaker, is what type of data about the prevalence of FASD in the NWT and people parenting with FASD does Health and Social Services collect? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Member's question. FASD is a common concern in the NWT, unfortunately.

We have the statistics that she quoted about people who have been to the diagnostic clinics. But for the population as a whole, we don't have data that tells us what the incidence of FASD is per thousand population. It's been estimated by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health that it's eight per one thousand population. But it is more prevalent in some populations than others. So we don't really have a firm grip of the number of people who have FASD at any age. Much of the difficulty here has to do with diagnosis. Sometimes people choose not to be diagnosed, or the parents choose not to have their children diagnosed, and so this is really a self-reporting metric. And for reasons that have to do with shame and fear of intervention by child and family services, people may choose not to go that route. Thank you.

Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. The NWT is definitely not alone in that. When looking for data and research worldwide, it's definitely -- the stigma around FASD is definitely shared and by having these conversations, I think we can do our part to try and strip away that stigma.

I'm wondering if part of the adult FASD clinic identifies whether or not the person taking part in the clinic is a parent? Thank you.

Yes, thank you. That's a very interesting question, whether that is something that's acknowledged, and I don't have that information off the top of my head. I know that they -- they're concerned with the person himself or herself, but I'm not sure if they take their family circumstances into consideration but, of course, it would be useful to know that. So I appreciate the question. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. One of the things that the Minister said is absolutely true, is that it's a self-reporting mechanism. But part of being able to have the opportunity to self-report is having access to that clinic. And so I'm wondering how many communities will the adult diagnostic clinic travel to in 2022 and how many NWT residents do they plan to assess? Thank you.