Bill 35 makes a series of technical amendments across territorial statutes: it corrects cross-references (changing several instances of “subsection 1(1)” to “section 1”), fixes drafting and bilingual errors, clarifies a definition in the Evidence Act for who counts as a “health care professional,” and repeals the Temporary Variation of Statutory Time Periods (COVID-19 Pandemic Measures) Act.
Most changes are housekeeping: spelling, punctuation, and reference corrections that reduce ambiguity in statutory text. The repeal of the temporary COVID‑19 time‑variation statute is the largest substantive move — it removes the statutory authority that previously allowed temporary extensions or variations of statutory deadlines enacted during the pandemic era, with potential downstream effects for administrative bodies and parties that relied on those powers.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill replaces incorrect cross-references and typographical errors, amends the Evidence Act’s definition of “health care professional,” adjusts wording in the Residential Tenancies Act, and repeals the Temporary Variation of Statutory Time Periods (COVID‑19 Pandemic Measures) Act. It also corrects French and English drafting errors in several acts.
Who It Affects
Territorial departments, regulatory colleges (notably nursing regulators), landlords and tenants, courts and tribunals that rely on statutory time limits, legal drafters and translators, and unions with bylaws referenced in statute. Administering bodies that used the COVID‑era variation authority are directly affected by the repeal.
Why It Matters
Housekeeping fixes reduce litigation risk from sloppy drafting; the Evidence Act change alters who can qualify as a health‑care professional for evidentiary purposes; and repealing the temporary COVID variation statute removes an emergency statutory mechanism that some bodies may still be relying on to adjust deadlines.
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What This Bill Actually Does
Bill 35 is an omnibus corrective act. It does not create a single new regulatory regime; instead it sweeps through a list of territorial statutes to replace incorrect cross‑references, correct misspellings, adjust short phrasing, and clarify a key definitional phrase in the Evidence Act.
The text targets drafting errors that can produce uncertainty in interpretation — for example, replacing “subsection 1(1)” with “section 1” where the intended reference was to the whole section rather than to a particular subsection.
One targeted substantive clarification is in the Evidence Act: the bill replaces an existing paragraph in the definition of “health care professional” so that it reads expressly to include persons “entitled to practice nursing in the Northwest Territories under the Nursing Profession Act.” That ties evidentiary status to registration/entitlement under territorial nursing law rather than to a broader or ambiguous description.The bill also standardizes language in the Residential Tenancies Act (changing “notice to terminate” to “a notice of termination”), fixes English and French text errors in the Health Information Act and the UNDRIP Implementation Act, and harmonizes a reference to bylaws in the Union of Northern Workers Act. Finally, and most consequentially, the act repeals the Temporary Variation of Statutory Time Periods (COVID‑19 Pandemic Measures) Act, removing the statutory authority that allowed temporary extensions of statutory deadlines introduced during the pandemic period.
The bill does not include specific transitional provisions that preserve particular extensions; where such transitional effects matter, administrators and practitioners will need to review prior orders and enabling decisions to confirm their ongoing validity.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill repeals the Temporary Variation of Statutory Time Periods (COVID‑19 Pandemic Measures) Act in full, removing the special authority for temporarily varying statutory deadlines that was created during the pandemic.
It amends the Evidence Act’s definition of “health care professional” by replacing paragraph (d) so it explicitly covers those “entitled to practice nursing in the Northwest Territories under the Nursing Profession Act.”, Multiple statutes (including the Elections and Plebiscites Act, Forest Act, Legal Aid Act, Medical Profession Act and Social Work Profession Act) replace the phrase “subsection 1(1)” with “section 1” to correct cross‑references.
Subsection 54(3) of the Residential Tenancies Act is reworded from “notice to terminate” to “a notice of termination,” aligning statutory wording with common legal practice for termination notices.
The bill corrects several drafting and bilingual errors: the Health Information Act’s English text corrects “heath” to “health,” the UNDRIP Implementation Act corrects a French term to “énoncé de compatibilité,” and the Union of Northern Workers Act standardizes “bylaws.”.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Fixes to cross‑references that point to section 1
This grouped amendment replaces instances of “subsection 1(1)” with “section 1” across several acts (Elections and Plebiscites Act; Forest Act; Legal Aid Act; Medical Profession Act; Social Work Profession Act). Practically, the change makes the reference read as a pointer to the whole section rather than to a narrow subsection. That reduces the risk that courts or administrators will read the reference as unintentionally limiting who or what is covered by the cited provision. Drafters often use these corrections to avoid late interpretive disputes about whether a statute meant to single out a subsection or the entire section.
Clarifies who counts as a health‑care professional for evidentiary rules
Section 13’s definition of “health care professional” drops the previous paragraph (d) and substitutes wording that ties nursing status to entitlement under the Nursing Profession Act. This anchors evidentiary treatment (for example, rules about privilege, records or testimony that depend on professional status) to territorial registration/licensing, which could exclude individuals who self‑identify as nurses but who lack NWT entitlement. Regulators and counsel who rely on expert‑witness or records exceptions will need to confirm credentialing under the Nursing Profession Act.
Wording change to termination notice language
Subsection 54(3) replaces “notice to terminate” with “a notice of termination.” The edit appears cosmetic, but it aligns statutory phrasing with the standard formality used in tenancy law and may reduce disputes about whether a particular communication met the statutory notice requirement. Landlords, tenants and adjudicators should review existing notice templates to ensure they match the corrected statutory language.
English and French drafting fixes in several acts
The bill corrects a handful of typographical and translation errors: it fixes “heath information custodian” to “health information custodian” in the English Health Information Act text; it amends French wording in the UNDRIP Implementation Act from “énoncé de comptabilité” to “énoncé de compatibilité”; and it standardizes “by‑laws” to “bylaws” in the Union of Northern Workers Act. These changes are aimed at drafting clarity and bilingual consistency; they do not introduce new policy but reduce the risk of contradictory interpretations between language versions.
Repeal of the Temporary Variation of Statutory Time Periods (COVID‑19) Act
The act repeals the entire Temporary Variation of Statutory Time Periods (COVID‑19 Pandemic Measures) Act. That statute had provided territorial authority to vary or extend statutory time limits in response to the pandemic. The repeal removes that statutory power going forward; the bill does not itself say whether past variations or orders made under that authority survive, so administrators and affected parties must check individual instruments and enabling orders for express savings or transitional clauses.
Standardize statutory reference to bylaws
The Union of Northern Workers Act’s English text is amended in subsection 8(1) to replace “by‑laws” with “bylaws.” This harmonizes spelling with other legislative text and reduces minor drafting inconsistency; it has no substantive effect on union governance but ensures a cleaner statutory reference for enforcement and interpretation.
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Who Benefits
- Regulatory colleges and professional regulators — receive clearer statutory cross‑references and a tightened definition in the Evidence Act that aligns evidentiary status to territorial entitlement, reducing ambiguity when assessing credentialed witnesses or custodians of records.
- Landlords, tenants and adjudicators — benefit from the clarified termination‑notice wording in the Residential Tenancies Act, which reduces drafting ambiguity in eviction and termination disputes.
- Legal drafters, translators and courts — gain from corrected bilingual and typographical errors (Health Information Act, UNDRIP Implementation Act, Union of Northern Workers Act), which lowers the risk of conflicting interpretations between language versions and sloppy citations.
Who Bears the Cost
- Territorial departments and agencies that used the COVID‑era variation authority — face administrative work to confirm whether time‑limit variations remain valid or must be reissued under regular statutory powers.
- Regulated parties and litigants who relied on extended deadlines — may lose procedural relief previously available under the repealed temporary statute and must reassess expired or continuing deadlines.
- Registrars and administrative tribunals — must update forms, templates and guidance (for tenancy notices, professional credential checks, bylaws references), and may absorb extra workload responding to queries about the repeal and corrected references.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill balances tidy statutory drafting and legal certainty against the practical risk that seemingly minor corrections — and the repeal of an emergency statute — can have substantive consequences: restoring ordinary statutory language improves long‑term clarity, but removing the COVID‑era variation authority and tightening certain definitions may disrupt administrative practices and parties who relied on the temporary flexibility.
Two implementation questions are likely to drive downstream work. First, the repeal of the Temporary Variation of Statutory Time Periods Act is legally straightforward on its face, but the bill does not include express transitional or savings clauses preserving prior orders or extensions made under that authority.
That forces administrators, tribunals and parties to audit existing instruments: some extensions may have been implemented by regulation or order under express savings in the regulations or in other statutes, while others may now lack a statutory basis. The absence of a general savings provision increases the risk of inadvertent invalidation of measures still relied upon.
Second, the cross‑reference corrections (changing “subsection 1(1)” to “section 1”) and the Evidence Act’s definitional tightening are drafting fixes with potential interpretive consequences. A citation to “section 1” can be broader than to “subsection 1(1)”; if courts previously read the old text narrowly, the change could expand the persons or matters covered.
Conversely, tying the Evidence Act definition to entitlement under the Nursing Profession Act narrows the pool of who counts as a nursing health‑care professional for evidentiary purposes and could exclude out‑of‑territory practitioners or provisional practitioners unless other statutory provisions preserve their status. Finally, the bill’s bilingual corrections reduce risk of contradictory language, but they also place the onus on legal teams to verify that the corrected French and English texts now align in substance and effect.
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