EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Again, like some of my responses on Friday, when we’re looking at legislation such as this, the actual wording in the clauses is generally kept vague and we deal with specifics within the regulations moving forward.
There again that would be an opportunity for us to address that specific concern.
Typically there wouldn’t be a need for an environmental health officer to inspect every bake sale or craft sale that’s going on unless there’s a reason for concern with people getting sick.
We would want to trace it back to find the source of it to make sure that it doesn’t occur any further.
One of the things that comes to my mind when you’re talking is the risk of when people are starting to sell fermented meat because the risk of botulism could be there if it’s not done properly.
How is that covered under this Act?
Basically it’s the same way unless there’s an issue that’s raised of a health or safety concern, and then we would initiate an investigation to make sure if there was some type of contamination, we would have the authority to take possession of whatever food it is that is unsafe and have the authority to destroy it.
That’s after the fact, really. If something has happened, then this legislation would kick in.
I want to go on to the institutions here that sell food.
Can you maybe explain how institutions are covered for food safety under this Act? How can we be sure that the food that we’re being served at the restaurant is safe for us?
I would just like to partially re-address the member’s question earlier about dealing with it after the fact.
It is after the fact, but I think from a standpoint, we don’t want to put barriers in place for people to be sharing food with the community from successful hunts.
That’s not the way we envision the Department of Health’s oversight into sharing of food in that manner. We just want to make sure it’s done safely.
If we’re dealing with specifically from the member’s question, if I was thinking of my earlier responses at the same time, when we’re dealing from a food safety in a restaurant atmosphere, there are regular inspections from our environmental health officers that look at all factors of the facility, as we discussed on Friday.
They’re not just going in and looking at the kitchen.
They’re checking to make sure food is stored at the right temperature and they’re checking to make sure that proper sanitation protocols are being followed.
Again, if there ever is an issue that arises, we have full investigative authority that we can go in there, find the source of the contaminant, remove and destroy it if necessary.
If one found a bug in their food that was served to them or a cigarette butt, would that constitute a contaminant that would be an issue under this legislation?
If you were to find a foreign substance such as you mentioned in your food, your first recourse would be to report it to the environmental health officer and then they would do an investigation.
There could be any number of reasons of how it could have got there. Washing procedures may not have been followed properly or it could have piggybacked into the community from the original source, from the suppliers.
They would want to do a full investigation to find out how it occurred, for one, and make sure that all proper sanitation methods and cleaning of food and utensils is followed properly to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
For the benefit for all of us, can you tell us how often you have inspectors go in and inspect restaurants and other public places that could have a real impact on our health?
Like I had mentioned in my response earlier and maybe the member might have just been coming in when I was talking about it, since April of 2015 every community has been visited a minimum of twice. They go in and look at all the facilities within the community during that visit.
In communities where the environmental health officers are located, inspections are done more frequently.
As far as the number, it does vary year to year depending upon the visits going around to the communities and the availability of time, but there are regular inspections. I’m not going to say it’s once a month or twice a year or three times a year.
It can vary on a year-to-year cycle.
What advance notices do you give these institutions that you’re coming to inspect them?
Hon. George Hickes: Sorry, Mr. Chairman, I missed that question.
Could the member repeat it, please?
Chairman: Repeat, Ms. Angnakak.
I’m wondering what advance notice is provided to the institutions that the inspectors go and visit.
The goal is to inspect each facility twice yearly.
On an annual basis there are over a thousand facilities that are inspected and there is no prior notification.
Are there any reports generated from these inspections and, if so, is it something that we can see or is there a reason why we couldn’t see those reports?
There are just general tracking reports unless there is an incident or a concern where a detailed report would be made.
To be honest, I would be very cautious of making that information public. There are privacy laws.
We would have to discuss that more with the privacy commissioner and the privacy people within our policy [division] to see if there’s a way to draw that information out in a useful way.
Again, we could maybe outline some of those details within the regulations once this legislation is approved and passed.
I just feel that it would probably help with the rumours that sometimes go around about different institutions that serve food and they say, “Well, if you go in their kitchen, you’re not going to want to eat there.”
There are people that go into kitchens and they have to go into kitchens because either electrical, plumbing, or something else happens in the kitchen.
Other people from the outside of that business might go in and then they see, perhaps, how some food is being stored and that.
It raises concern without it really being proven. Having some of these reports might really help in showing that inspections have actually been done on some of these institutions.
I know that in Toronto, when you go there, there’s a “Pass” sign. They have a green sign that says “Pass.” That means it has been inspected.
You feel comfortable going in. You know that your food is going to be served the way it should be served and stored the way it should have been stored. I’m just thinking along that line of just creating a little bit more certainty amongst the public that where you go out to eat has actually been inspected because we don’t always know that as the public.
We have no idea that you’re doing inspections. How would we know that? This is what I’m getting at.
I think it’s worth your while to make some of these… . You don’t have to go into all the details, but perhaps you can say that these entities had been inspected. I think it would go a long ways.
I wanted to ask you while we’re talking about these different things, but I also want to get your ideas on how you plan to monitor and enforce this legislation, especially when it comes to certain things like the issues that we were just talking about.
Again I hate to sound like a broken record, but once this legislation is approved, that’s when we could get started working on the regulations that will actually have a full scope of monitoring and reporting.
Again, most legislation like this one has a very broad basis within the law that we narrow the focus with the regulations to make sure that we’re fulfilling what the bill is intended to do.
That’s where we get into the details, like your question on privacy and making note of inspections.
This bill does allow us to do that.
It’s just a matter of how we flesh out the regulations associated with the legislation to make sure that we’re covering our bases in a way that’s achievable, measurable, and we can continue to monitor.
I’m going to go on to sanitation where we talk about sewage systems.
We have a lot of problems in Nunavut, I think, when it comes to operating and maintaining proper sewage systems. Some municipalities don’t have a proper sewer system. In fact I think it flows into the sea.
This bill, under 28, it says the municipal sewer system is going to sanitation.
I’m wondering: if communities are in conflict with this legislation, how do you go about helping these communities and working with them so that they meet the requirements under this legislation when they haven’t for years?
How are you going to change that?
The government is working on that continually with their water licensing requirements that have components of that within the waste disposal.
There have been some timelines directed to the government to be able to make sure we’re adhering to these legislated requirements on wastewater.
They do inspections to make sure that in places where... .
I have heard it discussed here just recently of not necessarily having a sewage lagoon but a water system that looks after the waste naturally through a marsh type system where it filters the water and cleans it as it treats it.
With regard to direct disposal in any body of water, that’s where again, when we have the legislation in place to give us more authority, the chief medical officer will have the authority to order things to be repaired.
Again, it goes into what’s sometimes feasible in a timeline. There have to be some realistic expectations.
If the chief medical officer of health comes in and orders Kimmirut to fix their water system, we all understand the capital planning process; it can’t happen overnight.
We need to make sure and have some level of comfort that those results are being monitored. Again, this legislation gives us a little bit more authority and ability to follow through with that.
When I just think about the past and how long it has taken, we haven’t moved very much in terms of our solid waste and how we deal with it all because it’s so expensive. Then we have this legislation that is going to come in if we pass it and there are going to be a lot of hamlets in conflict with this legislation.
That’s why I ask. Sometimes we could write all the rules, but in reality it’s very hard to enforce them. Like you said, it’s going to take a lot of time, I think, to work with hamlets over that.
The other issue that I did want to talk a little bit about are cemeteries, funerals, and all that.
Under 36, you go into the safe handling and that.
One of the complaints I have heard quite often from the communities is that there are no proper morgues. There are no morgues for the handling of bodies. That is sometimes very difficult and a very delicate issue.
How will you enforce some of these rules if you don’t even have a morgue to start off with?
I remember the late Mr. Pearson telling me where they stored bodies here for a while was at the First Air freezer. That would probably go against what it’s saying here. How are you going to deal with that?
I thank the member for raising that question. It’s a very important one. That is dealt with in this legislation that the department will create clear guidelines so that we can support community-based morgues, provide education to the operators, provide advise if needed, and ensure that the environmental health officers do conduct inspections of community-based morgues when they visit those communities.
We want to make sure that deceased people are transported and stored safely to make sure that we’re adhering to not just the health criteria but from a dignity standpoint to make sure that human remains are stored appropriately.
I’m going to go on to something else that I really don’t know too much about and that’s why I’m going to ask the question.
That’s about warnings of risk to public health. Under No. 50, “Duty to warn and protect,” when would this come into play? Can you give us an example of a situation where the chief public health officer would need to warn the public about something?
The list is pretty long where the chief medical officer of health does have the authority to put in a warning. It is for a couple of different reasons. One is to make sure the community’s safety if it’s an outbreak of something that is contagious.
Igloolik recently had one of E. coli where they made sure that the warnings went out for boiling water.
Sanikiluaq had a boil water advisory in the last few days.  The purpose of this legislation is also to make sure that there’s no political interference, that I can’t quash the chief medical officer of health from putting out a warning for health-related reasons because I don’t like it politically.
It gives the authority to the professionals.
I’m wondering then: what would you do in a situation where, perhaps, somebody had some kind of disease and didn’t want to be treated? How would you warn the public but at the same time take into consideration the right to privacy of that individual?
Whenever you make such a disclosure, you want to make sure that you’re not stigmatizing a group or community, to make sure it’s done in an anonymous fashion as possible. That being said, if somebody does have something that puts the public at risk, there is a requirement of treatment.
If necessary, the chief medical officer could order the treatment for the individual.
I have 51 seconds left, so I will use that 51 seconds to ask you this question.
Mr. Hickes, Minister of Health, what do you think is going to be the most challenging part of this legislation to enforce?
Hon. George Hickes: I don’t think it’s going to be matter of a challenge to enforce.
I think personally, when we establish the regulations, we want to make sure that we’re encompassing all potentials. To me I think where the challenge is going to be is to make sure that we’re covering all circumstances that could arise, so that the legislation and the regulations fit together in a harmonious way so that we can monitor.
With anything you’re trying to do and almost anything we do as a government or as a society, you need to be able to measure and monitor things, especially laws and regulations that are related to health.
Going forward, I don’t think the challenge is going to be the enforcement side of things; it’s going to making sure that we’re covering all our bases in the analysis side of things.
I hope that responds to the question.
Ms. Angnakak: Oh, I don’t have any other questions.
Welcome, Minister Hickes and your officials.
I’m not certain if it has been touched up on or not, but in dealing with this bill, does it cover anything with respect to… ?
There are issues with people in public housing with, let’s say, mould and it affects their health.
Is there something in here that speaks to that?
It’s actually a good question.
There would be a normal process of going through the local housing organization to do their own inspection on mould.
If people and tenants feel that it’s not being recognized or maybe it’s not being inspected appropriately, they can go to the environmental health officer and request an inspection. I hope that covers the member’s concern.
We hear especially of respiratory illnesses, namely, for infants or people that have certain diseases that are heightened when there is either mould or other types of substances in our buildings or that sort of thing or even for that matter, if it’s in public buildings or offices.
That’s why I asked that question and thank you for responding to that.
The other thing, my question was under the governance portion. You say that every community can set up wellness committees. I understand that the department provides grant contributions for their operations.
Is it something that perhaps you want to solidify moving forward, having not block funding but stable funding for community health wellness committees to be able to support the department with this legislation in public health and other issues of concern?
This legislation basically allows us to continue with an ongoing practice. We already have these community health and wellness committees that are established.
I have spoken to a couple of different groups that have been in the process of training and working on developing their community wellness plans.
We already do provide funding to these organizations and we also provide funding for a lot of the programs that they run.
This just enables us to continue with the ongoing practice of what we’re doing already, which I think we’re doing quite well as a matter of fact.
I guess like a lot of things, there are some communities where some committees work better than others, and then there are turnover issues or many things at play.
With respect to community wellness, I think that’s something we want to try to focus on and trying to have good investment towards programs that promote a healthy lifestyle.
I’m looking forward to some of the work that the department and the committees will be doing moving forward.
Moving on to another topic, under Part 7, I noted there are provisions for protection of whistleblowers.
Can the minister kind of explain how this new protection would work once the legislation is in place?
Basically, when we complete the regulations, it will help encompass again some of the details on the whistleblower aspect of it. At the end of the day I know the intent of it is to make sure that somebody who brings forward a health or safety concern doesn’t receive any type of punitive measures taken against them for bringing forward a health and safety concern.
We also want to make sure that we are covering our bases within the regulations to protect from malicious reports as well.
Using Member Angnakak’s question earlier, talking about public perception sometimes of an eating facility, of people talking about how you wouldn’t want to go in that kitchen, we also want to make sure that we’re protecting those enterprises from malicious reports as well that if somebody brings forward a concern, it’s founded and substantiated. We will want to make sure that those people are protected.
We will now begin the clause-by-clause review of Bill 14.
Please go to Bill 14 in your legislative binder.
Do members have Bill 14 in front of them?
Bill 14, Public Health Act.
Chairman: Clause 65.
Chairman: Clause 66.
Chairman: Clause 67.
Chairman: Clause 69.
Chairman: Clause 70.
Chairman: Clause 71.
Chairman: Clause 72.
Chairman: Clause 73.
Chairman: Clause 74.
Chairman: Clause 74.1.
Chairman: And clause 100.
Chairman: Do members agree that we have concluded Bill 14?
Do members agree, pursuant to Rule 62(2), that Bill 14 can immediately be placed on the orders of the day for third reading?
Closing comments, Minister Hickes.
I would just like to echo some of my comments earlier on how collaborative it was working with the standing committee, even though I was only one minister part of it. This has been ongoing through, I think, three different ministers.
I’m very happy and proud to have accomplished this piece of legislation with the collaboration of the standing committee putting forward recommendations and motions that fit the intent of the legislation, that we’re able to work all the suggestions in. I appreciate the support from the standing committee and my colleagues on getting this legislation through.
I know there’s a lot of work behind the scenes from policy staff and legal experts to get us to this point today. I think it’s a culmination of a lot of hard work.
When we sit here in the legislature and go through a piece of legislation in a couple of days, it doesn’t do it justice of how much work was entailed.
I personally thank everyone that was involved in putting this legislation to this point and getting it approved in the Assembly.
I would like to thank all the staff involved, my witnesses with me here today, and the committee and colleagues.
We will now proceed to the review of Bill 16. Before we do, we will take a five-minute break to set up.
Bill 16 – An Act to Amend the Travel and Tourism Act – Consideration in Committee
Chairman: Welcome back, committee members. We are proceeding with the review of Bill 16.
I would like to ask the Minister of Economic Development and Transportation if she has officials that she would like to appear before the committee. Minister Ell-Kanayuk.
To my left is Sherri Rowe, my Deputy Minister, and to my right is the Director of Policy, Matthew Bowler.
Chairman: Thank you. Welcome to your staff.
Please proceed with your opening comments, Minister Ell-Kanayuk.
It is my pleasure to appear before the Committee of the Whole to review Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Travel and Tourism Act, with my colleagues.
Bill 16 meets a strategic objective set out in Tunngasaiji: A Tourism Strategy for Nunavummiut, 2013 and reflects Sivumut Abluqta’s commitment to developing the tourism sector.
(interpretation ends) The original Travel and Tourism Act was not drafted for Nunavut and is more than 28 years old. The proposed amendments will ensure that this Act reflects the present state of tourism in the territory, including that commercial passenger vessels such as cruise ships are appropriately regulated.
The main goals of the amendments are to:
Promote quality tourism services;
Promote public safety;
Maximize the economic benefits from tourism for Nunavummiut;
Ensure tourism development aligns with local priorities and Inuit societal values; and
Bring the Act into line with current Canadian and international tourism legislation.
In 2015 the Department of Economic Development and Transportation held a series of consultations in seven communities with stakeholder organizations as well as through online surveys, conference calls, and webinar sessions.
These consultations led to 15 recommendations for amendments to the Act.
The current legislation fails to adequately capture commercial passenger vessels and pleasure craft.
The amendments will allow for the drafting of new Marine Tourism Regulations to ensure the responsible development of marine tourism.
The amended Act will provide for a regulatory power limiting the number of passengers that may disembark in a particular community from a commercial passenger vessel.
The Marine Tourism Regulations will allow us to limit the number of passengers that may disembark and will allow us to require that operators of commercial passenger vessels and larger pleasure craft file pre- and post-trip reports or comply with other duties.
The proposed updates to the Act reflect a concern for public safety and community perspectives, for example, by allowing for the creation of Restricted Tourism Areas.
These updates also support a regulatory climate that will help foster economic development opportunities for Nunavummiut.
Appropriate legislation and regulations can encourage tourism operators to improve their businesses by establishing professional standards for guides in the territory, as well as through adequate oversight of wilderness tourism activities.
I am confident that this Act will encourage growth in the tourism sector in a manner that is acceptable to communities and will increase economic opportunities for Nunavummiut, whether that is through small outfitting businesses, locally owned hotels, or international cruise ships. (interpretation) Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As Chair of the Standing Committee on Legislation, I am pleased to make opening comments as the Committee of the Whole begins its consideration of Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Travel and Tourism Act.
As members will recall, Bill 16 received second reading on June 8, 2016 and was referred to the Standing Committee on Legislation for consideration.
The standing committee supports the principle of the bill, which is to modernize the legislative framework within which the government regulates matters related to the tourism sector in Nunavut.
The standing committee is also mindful of the government’s recent announcement concerning the transfer of certain responsibilities from Nunavut Tourism to the Department of Economic Development and Transportation.
Mr. Chairman, during the minister’s recent appearance before the standing committee on the occasion of its clause-by-clause consideration of Bill 16, a total of four motions were moved to amend the bill, all of which received ministerial concurrence.
For the benefit of Nunavummiut who are following our proceedings today, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the two major amendments to Bill 16.