NWT MLAs used last week’s brief sitting to pass legislation introducing better protections for first responders. The government had introduced the bill after a similar private member’s bill died.
Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart introduced legislation seeking to improve the benefits and coverage available to first responders, but his bill’s progress was abruptly halted when Speaker of the House Shane Thompson ruled – following a query from minister Jay Macdonald – that it broke legislature rules by appropriating public funds.
Cabinet subsequently promised to introduce a government bill to accomplish the same thing, saying such work had already been under way. Government bills don’t have the same spending restrictions as bills introduced by regular MLAs.
The government version of the legislation was introduced in late May and cleared the House in a matter of days, passing on June 3 as MLAs skipped the usual process of committee review. Testart’s bill had already been extensively reviewed and the government version contained many of the same provisions.
In the legislature, Testart said the government version even made some improvements on his bill, including the addition of coverage for fire scene inspectors and a mandatory five-year review of what is covered.
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In a final review of the bill before it passed, MLAs – led by Testart – made one last amendment, altering the so-called latency period. In the world of insurance and occupational health, latency periods are the time between initial exposure to a hazard and the clinical detection of a health issue that’s assumed to be related.
Testart’s amendment sets rules that require someone to have worked as a firefighter for at least two years to access coverage for certain cancers. The latency period would have been five to 10 years otherwise. Cabinet abstained.
“The NWT will have the best presumptive coverage in Canada,” Testart said in a statement online after the bill received third reading (it comes into force at the start of 2027).
“Thank you to the firefighters and first responders who have never given up advocating for better conditions.”
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Vince McKay, the minister responsible for the government legislation and a trained firefighter, said in a statement that the legislation “will make it easier for firefighters and first responders to access workers’ compensation benefits when they are diagnosed with certain occupational cancers, heart-related conditions, or post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“By reducing barriers to support, we are helping ensure workers can focus on their health, recovery and families,” McKay stated.
Testart did note, as MLAs carried out their final review of the bill, that some classes of worker have raised concern at being left out. He mentioned coroners, wildland firefighters and social workers.
McKay said the categories of worker covered by the legislation would be re-examined as part of the mandatory five-year review process that the bill sets out.
“Right now we don’t have an agenda, if you will, to add anybody else,” he said, “but there is a commitment to start looking at the other groups.”
