Katrina Nokleby

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The next one I'm looking at is on page 32, the increased seasonal, parttime, and fulltime employment in the small communities. The part about amending the Housing Corporation policies to allow for the homebased businesses, it says that it's in progress and that the changes were delayed until February of 2022. Well, we're now in March of 2022 so I'm curious to know if we are moving forward on allowing homebased businesses in Housing Corp buildings. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Finance as the Minister responsible for the public sector. I have questions in regards to the labour market supplement that was offered to the Union of Northern Workers.

Given that there is a labour shortage across our healthcare positions, what was the rationale for only including the frontline RNs and medical lab technicians in the proposed labour market supplement? Is the department planning at looking at other healthcare positions for a labour market supplement and if so, what are the timelines on that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Now that I'm on the right page.

I'm looking at the working group that's been established for this purpose, and I note that it says that it's fulfilled and the timeline was winter of 2020. So that's the establishment of the group. However, it does state that they are going to be making recommendations, identifying gaps, programs, all of that in the progress to date.

So can the Premier or the Minister speak to where that information is if this group has been established for almost I guess it would just be a year if it's winter of 2020, but when are we going to see some...

With respect, it's a mandate item. So to say that I just find that to be a little bit sort of shunting the responsibility here. Again, if you've put it in the mandate, then you have an obligation to connect with communities and get feedback on that item. Thank you.

I'm just going to run with that commitment. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think that I would be surprised if you didn't get support from Indigenous governments to look at this program and do some real evaluation. I do understand that a lot of these programs and such are the feds, and they have their their restrictions or their ideas. But yet again, it is our our government's responsibility, Cabinet's responsibility to tell the feds why their programs don't work just like, you know, constituents come to us to tell you why your programs don't work. So I think this is one where we really need to take back to the federal government that what they're doing is...

I think that just kind of emphasized what I was saying, is that the focus seems to be on adaptation and nothing around the mitigation part, and I guess where I'm going with this is I'm always this comes back to the conversation about putting the money upfront in order to do things right to begin with so that we're not then playing catch up later on. That's exactly what mitigation is. You know, I had mentioned around the flooding last year that I had been hearing for years about erosion of the banks of the river in Fort Simpson. The Minister's well aware himself. And so therefore, you know...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm sure that makes the chair of this committee quite happy right now. I think that's excellent.

I note that there are a lot of within the progress to date comments around supportive development of the food industry, that recommendations are being reviewed currently by the department for a variety of things like the meat regulatory framework as well as just the developing the food production businesses.

Can the Premier or the Minister speak to when we could start to expect to see some of this work start commencing? For example, the last time there, the review and...

No, I think I'm good. I just want to always throw in the faster we can get land I think into the communities' hands, the better. Thank you.

No, thank you, I'm good, Mr. Chair.