Notes from the legislative assembly
MLA calls for youth centre
Kirsten Fenn and Jessica Davey-Quantick
Northern News Services
Monday, March 13, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Deh Cho MLA Michael Nadli called for support for an initiative to create a youth centre in Fort Providence.
"Our community has not had an activity centre for the youth since 2012," Nadli said on March 9. "This lack has led to many youth being involved in illegal and substance abuse-related activities in the community,"
He estimates that Fort Providence has about 160 residents between the ages of 10 and 14 - 100 of which were surveyed and identified that they wanted an accessible space open on evenings and weekends.
"This space would foster leadership opportunities, increase the youth's self-esteem and confidence, as well as giving them a sense of responsibility and belonging," said Nadli.
Caroline Cochrane, minister of municipal and community affairs, committed to having the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs work further with Nadli to find external sources of support for a youth centre, as well as making suggestions on how to access existing programs within her department.
- Jessica Davey-Quantick
Changes to A New Day draws critic
Hay River North MLA R.J. Simpson said the request for proposal released by the Department of Justice for a revamped A New Day program left many of those who designed the original program "profoundly disappointed."
Simpson said the request includes changes to how facilitators are employed and what background knowledge they are expected to have.
"The result appears to be a program stripped of all of the qualities that make it successful," said Simpson. "So what the department has done is structure the RFP to eliminate all these qualities and really sterilize it making it more palatable to government."
Justice Minister Louis Sebert had not had the opportunity to review the RFP by March 9, and was unable to answer questions about whether the new program would accept referrals from outside agencies like Probation Services.
However, he said the co-ordinator will "actively support" the inclusion of cultural supports and connection with elders in the new version.
- Jessica Davey-Quantick
Green pushes for family violence survey
Yellowknife Centre MLA Julie Green demanded Caroline Cochrane, minister responsible for the status of women, commit to a new survey on attitudes surrounding family violence - and to find the $100,000 price tag to complete it.
Green said the last survey was done 10 years ago.
The March 10 request came on the heels of the Feb. 9 rejection of a five-year ban on people convicted of family offenses running for territorial office.
"Members had the opportunity yesterday to be role models in family violence prevention and they decided not to take it," said Green.
"But the issue is not going to go away. It's time for us to get serious about reducing rates of family violence."
She stated a survey would help get to the root causes of family violence.
Cochrane responded that she was "quite offended" by Green's comments, adding a focus on healing does not mean members don't care about family violence.
Cochrane stated her department had looked into the attitudinal survey, and had made the decision that was not the best use of $100,000 at this time.
"I would rather focus that money on prevention and healing," said Cochrane.
"I am definitely committed to addressing the root causes of family violence. And the root causes are not an attitudinal survey."
- Jessica Davey-Quantick
Pre-k funding saga continues
Yellowknife Centre MLA Julie Green wants answers for how Minister of Education, Culture and Employment Alfred Moses intends to ensure other programs remain viable after junior kindergarten becomes a reality.
"A very real possibility from the introduction of JK is that parents will have less choice in the future than they have now, whatever their income," Green said on March. 9.
She asked if there had been any research to offset the loss of children for fee based programs across the territory, like the Montessori School in Yellowknife and the Children First Association in Inuvik.
She suggested that the department fund individual children, instead of a whole program, with the government subsidy following the child to whichever program they are enrolled in.
"We are dealing with what we need to do today," said Moses.
"We want to provide services to all families across the Northwest Territories, give families in Yellowknife, in Hay River, in Inuvik, the same options and opportunities that we have in our small communities by providing quality early childhood programming through junior kindergarten in the schools."
He added that he would have to check with the department to see if an analysis like Green requested had been done.
- Jessica Davey-Quantick
International Women's Day recognized
A number of MLAs spoke about the influential women in their lives and around the territory in honour of International Women's Day on March 8.
The day is recognized globally "to celebrate women's progress toward achieving gender equality while identifying the challenges that still remain," said Caroline Cochrane, the minister responsible for the status of women.
Cochrane said the NWT has made progress over the years. Fifty per cent of territorial board members were made up of women as of this January, compared to 43 per cent in February 2016.
Women also hold 36 per cent of seats on community government councils in the NWT, she said.
"But we have more work to do," Cochrane said, adding just two of the 19 members of the legislative assembly are women, for example.
She said the territorial government is working on an action plan to support women in politics, and members of the assembly participated in Daughters of the Vote, which brought young women from the NWT to Yellowknife this year to learn about politics.
Yellowknife Centre MLA Cory Vanthuyne also stressed that more needs to be done to encourage women to take part in politics.
- Kirsten Fenn
Petition proposes eliminating time change
The days will start getting longer this Sunday when NWT residents turn their clocks forward by an hour. But some people want to do away with the need to switch over clocks altogether.
A petition to permanently adopt daylight savings time in the NWT and stop turning the clocks back each fall made its way into the legislative assembly on March 7.
"This will result in an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day during the darkest months of the year, when we need it most," the petition states.
Yellowknife North MLA Cory Vanthuyne presented the petition in the legislative assembly.
Yellowknife city councillor Julian Morse started the petition in November.
It closed on Jan. 30 with a total of 533 online signatures.
A motion passed to refer the petition to Standing Committee on Social Development. Vanthuyne said the committee would then look at what effects the elimination of time changes could have.
- Kirsten Fenn
Security improved at correctional centre
Work on a new fence around the North Slave Correctional Complex could break ground this summer, the justice minister suggested Tuesday, although he said the government still needs to secure funding approval.
The justice department received approval during capital budget talks last fall to install new security cameras at the jail and improve the perimeter fence "along the west property line to the main Kam Lake driveway entrance," Justice Minister Louis Sebert said at the legislative assembly.
"It is expected that tendered documents on those two projects are currently being prepared for a spring tender and summer construction," he said.
The improvements come after accused murderer Denecho King escaped from the correctional centre in August, leading to a four-day manhunt across Yellowknife.
Sebert reassured MLAs that the public is safe and that fixes are already underway to prevent a similar situation from happening again.
- Kirsten Fenn
MLAs scolds MACA
MLAs gave the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs a slap on the wrist in its report on how the department supports community governments.
The Standing Committee on Government Operations was reviewing a scathing auditor general's report that found "MACA's support to community governments was inadequate to help mitigate risks in the key essential service areas of waste management, emergency preparedness planning, and fire protection services," the report states.
The auditor general did find MACA helped communities maintain safe drinking water.
But the standing committee was unimpressed with MACA's tardiness when it came to providing the committee with its action plan to address the auditor general's 13 recommendations. The committee says it was left with half a day to consider MACA's 36-page action plan, calling it "unacceptable."
"The committee appreciates the well intended apology offered by the deputy minister but is of the view that the late provision of important materials to the standing committee evidences either a lack of understanding or a lack of respect, on the part of the department, for the standing committee's oversight role in the process," the report says.
MLAs endorsed the auditor general's recommendations and made seven recommendations to MACA.
- Kirsten Fenn
