Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today, I have Mr. Russell Neudorf, the associate deputy minister of the COVID secretariat, and Ms. Jeannie Mathison, the director of finance with Health and Social Services. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I may ask my DM to expand on what I am saying. There is a cycle of how the MOUs are done. One year, the Indigenous governments will meet in Yellowknife, and the next year we will meet in their communities, et cetera, so that does make an impact on the budgets regarding where the travel is. Madam Chair, I would like the deputy minister to expand.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Respectfully, I beg to differ with the honourable Member in that every young drummer is an excellent drummer. In my opinion, every person who picks up any kind of traditional instrument, or begins to sew, or begins to fish or hunt, is excellent in my opinion. I don't want to quash people. They need to be brought up because they learn as they grow; all of us, even as we're old.

With the money for the special events funding, like I said already, if this money is not needed by the organizations that currently have it, we would be willing to look at using it for other issues...

Thank you, Madam Chair. At the beginning of this Assembly, we did have a presentation to the Executive on the negotiations. They do have mandates. They know exactly what. As stated yesterday, Madam Chair, the difficulty is that, when it becomes too financial, monies et cetera, they need to actually come back to the executive for approval. The negotiators are not executive. They do not have that authority to make excessive decisions without a Cabinet approval. That is a common process. In the last government, they said that they would all be done; probably not the best commitment to make on the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm trying to think back to when I first started. It was one of the first documents I actually looked at, and I had concerns with it, as well, Madam Chair. I brought it to my staff and I asked them what this was about. I recognize in those conversations that it's about basic standards of care. There are things about children having rights to, I can't remember, basic rights that children should have. I felt at that point that they were pretty basic and standard across, but I also respect that Indigenous governments might have taken offense to it and said, "How dare you...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I have witnesses.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to turn that to the deputy minister, Martin Goldney.

Again, we can't change the past, but we need to learn from the past. As stated to Members when we spoke in other times, I made a commitment. I did. I talked to all of our Ministers and said, "Please, don't leave unless it's extenuating circumstances." People do have extenuating circumstances, medical travel, loss of family members, horrible stories have happened over COVID-19, and I wouldn't want to penalize anyone for those things. That's not the goal of protecting our residents, is to penalize people; it's to keep people safe.

I had spoken to our Ministers, and I had spoken to all of our...

Thank you, Madam Chair. If you can pass that on to Deputy Minister Martin Goldney.

I will start by saying that no Minister, no elected Minister in this House, left during Christmas because I believe that, as elected officials, all of us, all of us in this House as elected officials, are responsible for being role models to the residents of the Northwest Territories. We cannot change the past, but I do know that the public was hurt. I also know that over 1,500 people from the Northwest Territories left the NWT for leisure travel during that time. I also know that it was not an order; it was a recommendation, so nobody broke the law, even the residents who left. No one broke...