Caroline Cochrane

Things have been going really fast over the past few months, really fast the last few weeks, so I was under the impression that we had already done it. My commitment is, if we haven't already done it, that I will be providing those this week. I know my staff is listening. They're jumping on it right now.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, absolutely. Mandate letters were done, painfully, again. At the beginning of this Assembly, first of all, it was identified which Ministers would take over the priorities in the mandate, and from the mandate exercise we developed mandate letters. We had made a commitment that we would be sharing that with the standing committee. When we were almost ready, it was in my inbox waiting for me to give final, and COVID-19 hit. With COVID-19 we stepped back and we said, "Do we need to add in this COVID-19?" My first gut was just to add in COVID-19, you've got to do it...

Again, most people, when they talk about COVID-19, people have seen the economic impacts and people across the world, across Canada have been talking about economic recovery. I think we are one of the only jurisdictions that is talking about economic and social recovery. Perhaps because we are a small population, we had the benefit of actually seeing what we could do in a short amount of time. So I think that involving MLAs was a commitment that we made at the beginning of this session. It has been long. It does take a lot more time, but I made a commitment that it would not be Cabinet plus...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Looking for a plan of our response for COVID-19, absolutely, we are looking at it. However, I do want to be careful with that, because COVID-19 is still here. We are still experiencing things at a rapid rate. It has slowed down a bit, but, by the second wave, we are expecting that changes will come pretty rapidly.

We have been in the process now of changing our services, providing services that we needed and programs that we needed to accompany people, but some other things will need to be done. For example, the municipal and community government, EMO is the one that...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to welcome all Members back to the continuation of our Second Sitting of the 19th Legislative Assembly.

Much has changed in the Northwest Territories and around the world since our sitting was interrupted by the declaration of a global COVID-19 pandemic this past March. Governments across Canada, including our own, have had to take swift and strong action to protect the health and safety of Canadians from this disease.

COVID-19 is a disease that no one in the world has a natural immunity to. There is no vaccine, and there is no effective anti-viral treatment for it...

Certainly, the nine Indigenous governments that did sign on to devolution will be taking part in this review. We also will be developing a plan for how to engage with the other Indigenous governments that didn't sign on.

As stated in the first question, there be discussions coming to Cabinet not only on care packages, whether we are going to go there or not, but also how we deal with the fears of our seniors, our elders, and their care, because they are the most vulnerable population within this pandemic. Those are conversations that we will have, but again, reinforcing, at this point, we have zero cases in the Northwest Territories. I am begging all residents, please, I know that people are panicking, but it's important that we remain calm, that we follow good hygiene, and we follow the advice from our chief...

Cabinet will be meeting every day throughout this duration. I should let everyone know that now, because we need to keep on top of this, so I can commit, Mr. Speaker, that we will have conversations on the evictions, on the power rates, on the supply chains, all the impacts that will come to the residents of the Northwest Territories. I am not going to commit on what the solution will be. What I commit to is that we will have those discussions and we will be looking at the least impact possible relating to COVID-19. We cannot just shut down every collection, every business happening in the...

I have already given direction to all of our departments to look at how we can support all of our residents in the Northwest Territories, including our business partners. ITI and Infrastructure are looking at how we can do the procurement, make sure that people are paid timely during this crisis, et cetera. All departments are looking at the influx of additional costs that are going to come. People who are going to be laid off of work will be impacting our systems, so income support is on that. We have asked for every department to now do tabletop exercises to see how they will react if people...

The Member is correct. Once the health crisis is done, whether we end up with a huge incidence of a number of residents with COVID-19 or not, this is going to impact our businesses in the Northwest Territories. It's not only the tourism business; it's all businesses that we are worried about at this point. We are working diligently within our departments and across jurisdictions with the federal government to come up with an economic plan. At this point, though, it would be irresponsible for us to just start bailing out one or two businesses, because my instinct is telling me that more...