Katrina Nokleby

Mr. Speaker, yesterday marked the United Nations' International Day of Women and Girls in Sciences; sadly, something I wasn't aware of until after I had done my Member's statement for the day. However, as I think every day we should be focused on this important topic, I've decided to speak on it today, as well.

My career prior to politics, for those who may not be aware, was in engineering, and one of my passions in life is advancing the opportunities for women and non-binary people in the field of science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM. You may have heard me quote the statistic in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am really excited to one day be able to drive across that bridge, as I have spent a lot of time in Tulita, so I am pretty excited to hear that. My last question just has to do with funding. Will the Minister commit to pressing for 100 percent dollars for northern infrastructure funding, particularly for northern highways? Will she commit to being a thorn in the side of every FPT table that she is on to impress upon them the urgency for this money for the North? It must start now, not in years, or we will lose too many businesses in the meantime. Thank you.

Yes, that would be great if the Minister could provide that. Can the Minister provide us with an update on the tendering for the Prohibition Creek Access Road, a project which is currently infusing $15 million of federal infrastructure money into the Northwest Territories? Can the Minister outline how that project will lead to increased training and economic opportunity for Northwest Territories residents?

If I sound like a broken record, it's because I have often spoken about the need for all season roads. However, I do so again to urge my colleague, the Minister of Infrastructure, to go back to her federal tables and demand better for us; demand that we receive 100 percent funding to build our roads. They are literally the road to economic recovery for many northern businesses. Given the infrastructure deficit the federal government has left us in, the promised highway in the 1970s that never materialized, it is time we remind the Government of Canada that this was not our doing, and that it...

Thank you for that. Forgive me if I do not hold a lot of optimism in the GNWT's renewal and studying and the siloed approach, to then again bringing down our silos as we go through department by department. I really do not see that this is going to lead to a lot other than talking for the next two years, nothing changing, and we continue on in the exact same manner. More of a comment. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am just going to ask about the net fiscal benefit transfer to the Aboriginal parties. I'm probably duplicating maybe some of what my colleague was asking around the Heritage Fund, but my understanding is based on percentages of royalties that are earned from the mineral resources sector. Understandably, this is why 2019-2020 is quite a bit lower, but then, again, like everywhere else, we come back to pre-COVID estimations again. I think it's really optimistic to think that we are going to be getting the same type of royalties that we were getting pre-COVID going...

Thank you. I do appreciate that the Minister is cautious about wanting to not take things away that later on are not going to be able to be added back or easily added back. However, I do know that there have to be some very obvious things that are not going to be coming back for the next year, let alone two to three or four years after that, so I kind of wish or I do wish that the government had taken both of the approaches, really. My comment on that is that -- you are waving at me; I have lost my train of thought -- that there should have been. Yes, so my question would be: Would the...

I'm still curious to know what those potentially could perhaps be, but I will move on. I just wanted to come back to some comments made by my colleagues around coming close to the debt limit. I, too, am concerned to see that we are doing a lot of borrowing now and spending a lot of money in what I feel like should start to become more of an austerity type time, not taking on new debt.

However, that being said, when the Minister commented around what she thinks will reduce that or not make us hit that limit, it was about comments around Health and Social Services or the health authorities and...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Trying to dive through all of this, I am looking at the line item for the capital leases under the Government of the Northwest Territories subheading. I note that we currently don't have debt on the books or projected for the end of 2022; however, there is the $500,000 in contingency noting that the contingency is based on the working capital requirements. As the note says: Does the government anticipate that they are going to take on new debt or some sort of new expense here that we haven't currently been spending money on? Thank you.

I know I sound like a bit of a broken record, but I am always going to continue to bring up infrastructure and repeatedly ask the same questions. Can the Minister provide a timeline for the completion of the Great Bear River Bridge, including any unforeseen delays or difficulties due to the COVID situation?