Kevin O'Reilly

I'm sorry.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

The Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures will:

Consider the potential for existing or emerging technologies to enhance public access to information and public interaction.

Do further consultation with individual members of the Legislative Assembly, Chairs of standing committees, GNWT officials, and members of the public and organizations; to elicit input on how to enhance transparency and public engagement in the work done by the Standing Committees.

The committee recognizes that further work should be done to examine a number of issues including:

What does “public” really...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Yes, I'd encourage the department to talk to the diamond mines about their dust suppression activities. I think it is important that we use this opportunity in Committee of the Whole to ask these sort of questions in spite of some resistance perhaps from the other side. But we're here to talk about these capital expenditures and I'll use that opportunity. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Great. Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that and I think the city does do good public consultation work, so in collaboration with you folks, you know, I have a lot of confidence that there'll be an opportunity then for the folks in Niven Lake in particular to express their ideas about the design and that, so thank you very much. I appreciate that commitment.

I just want to move on if I can, Mr. Chair, to a different matter. I noticed on page 3 that there's this site runway stabilization using EK35 which is a dust suppressant, so it just made me wonder what sort of dust suppressants do we use on...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to follow up with the Minister on the Highway No. 4 reconstruction, and I appreciate his commitment on behalf of the department to do the work on the stretch of highway near Niven Lake. Half of that's in my riding as well. So just to be clear, that work is scheduled then for 2017-2018 out of the capital budget? Is that where the funding's coming from? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I'll keep this very short; I know we've had a long day here and probably go for a bit longer, but I did want to acknowledge and thank the committee members who worked on this report. We've done a lot of work together. I think we've had more meetings than any of the other standing committees. It's a huge relief to me personally to have this off my desk and a lot of personal satisfaction. So I want to recognize the work of the committee members: the honourable Member for Thebacha, the Member for Yellowknife Centre, the Member for Nahendeh and the Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh...

Merci, monsieur le President. My questions are for the Premier. It appears that our departments work in completely isolated silos when it comes to caribou and roads. Will the Premier tell this House and the public why caribou are not considered in designing and developing roads into the Slave Geological Province? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. No further questions.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'm sorry, I just noticed this. On this page and it's reflected further back there, the money that we're expending on information technology projects is declining. There back in 2015-2016, it was over $2 million, last year it was $1.49 million, this year it's $1.4 million. Are we getting that much better at replacing our information technology or are we just sort of building up a deficit in this area. What's happening, if I could ask the Minister? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the response, but I think I heard the words "I think." So could we get a commitment out of the Minister to provide that information to Regular Members? Thanks, Mr. Chair.