Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, my direction would be for the Minister of ITI, and all Ministers, to work with all applicable stakeholders. That would include in our capital city; it would include the City of Yellowknife and our Indigenous governments that are located within our capital, or a proximity within our capital. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Absolutely, we do want to work with Indigenous governments whenever possible. It's a win-win. I say that every time I meet with the Indigenous governments. If we can get them more sustainable, they will actually give jobs to their people; that means savings on public housing, savings on income support. That's the way I'm looking at our relationship with Indigenous governments; not as a handout, not as a favour. We will work better when we work together.

Like I said, we are committed. I have no problem with doing negotiated contracts with Indigenous governments. As for...

Thank you, Madam Chair. If the Members would like, we can offer a briefing to the standing committee to identify where we are with each of these projects, and the timeline that we see for them, if that would work for the Members. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That's 30 jobs that will be new; it's not 30 in every community. Some communities, like Colville Lake, I mean, having 30 new jobs there might be really difficult to achieve. There are jobs, though, that can be brought into it. I know that using, for example, the Housing Corporation, housing maintainers are jobs that should be, in my opinion, in every single community. Where we have an LHO, there definitely should be housing maintainers there, oil burner mechanics, electricians, et cetera. We might need to bring in some journeypeople, but I think that's our obligation...

Thank you, Madam Chair. If I remember right, I think it was over 120,000 tourists came through Yellowknife in the last year. Correct, 120,000. I think it was around that. It was 110, I think, the year before that, so we're steadily increasing. Yellowknife doesn't need to have an influx in tourists. What we need in Yellowknife, and my personal opinion, is we need activities for tourists to take part in. That's the issue in Yellowknife. The smaller communities, like we've heard over and over, have no economy. Tourism is a viable economy to the smaller communities. Even though we've said that we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We asked the departments to provide the mandate actions, and then the deliverable dates and the measurable outcomes. In fairness, the departments were a bit conservative in their dates because nobody wants to be set up to fail. Then we brought this mandate document in to standing committee as a draft, and standing committee said, "Be bold," so we went back to the departments and we told them to be bolder, because, again, I don't want to set up the departments to fail, either. They looked with a little bit more objective lens, and they put timelines that they felt would...

Minister of Finance?

Thank you, Madam Chair. What we would do with the working group is we would, of course, have it interdepartmental, because we all have contracts, most of us; and the other thing, of course, is we would bring in some industry partners to provide advice, as well. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll take it as a comment. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. If I can get the Minister for ITI to answer that. Thank you, Madam Chair.