Rylund Johnson

I mean, I somewhat disagree with that. You are asking the Assembly for millions of dollars; you can probably also ask the feds for millions of dollars. Do we have an estimated date of completion for the Fort Smith Territorial Fire Centre? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister responsible for housing. Can the Minister tell us when the Fort Good Hope Seniors Centre is going to open? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Can I just get a bit more understanding, then, of how this is going to be procured. Will this be normal public procurement, and then I guess the intention is this $1.6 million will be intended to get us design and then we will go out for a public tender? Is this a design bid built essentially, I'm asking, or a design build; what kind of procurement are we using? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. You know, it's obviously in everyone's interest to spend this tens of millions of dollars, I think. We've heard the feds say, you know, well we don't need to give you more community infrastructure money, you're not spending the money we gave you. And I've heard MACA say similarly well, we don't need to increase the community infrastructure budget, there's tens of millions of dollars not being spent. I think we all know if this was just unconditional money to spend on infrastructure, they'd get it done. But sometimes the ICIP project categories were rather specific...

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I guess my concern is the way I understand this to work is the feds essentially gave us $66 million, they said, get your communities to apply and then you will help decide which ones go forward, not all of the projects communities wanted to do obviously made the first round of cuts and now there are some that, you know, inflation is causing some community needs to reapply or find other money or not go ahead so that money is not available for another community to kind of fill in the gap. That's my understanding of the current situation. So I guess the solution...

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad to hear that. You know, I think we all know there's a lack of trust and there's still a narrative of the government going up and down the valley, and you know, putting those cede and surrender clauses in, and I think it would be a symbolic win to get them out and to show that we are willing to move on.

We've also heard that for truly free and prior informed consent to exist, perhaps the current regulatory system, although, you know, a great madeinthe North solution, is not one truly built on consent. There is a number of things in agreements where GNWT or...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Committee has recently been travelling on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People legislation, and we've been getting a lot of feedback, a lot of feedback that I think many people in this territory have heard for years. But I have a growing concern that this government is kind of blurring the lines of truth and adopting symbolic statements that perhaps they don't fully need.

In that legislation, for example, it says the GNWT rejects all form of colonialism. Certainly a lofty goal but we heard that the GNWT is a colonial government; it is not a valid...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Sorry, can I just get the numbers again on what the power corp applied to be the rate of diesel on the rate application and what the price of diesel is and I believe it's like a dollar and a dollar 50, and those numbers are they have their own kind of prices because they're exempt from carbon tax and some other things; can I just get those numbers? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday in this House, the Premier referred to a number of agreements that I believe they were in draft stage and going out for consultation. I'm just wondering when and if, at all, those will be available for the public to see or myself to see? You know, it's been about 20 years, I think, since you can see whether the GNWT's negotiating position has changed on these matters. There's not a lot of documents out there that shows where we are currently where we have been negotiating for decades. So I'd be very interested to see where we're at and what's changed in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As committee has been dealing with its UNDRIP legislation, I think it's fair to say there are some fairly high expectations about what the government is willing to change and there are some fairly tall asks being made of the government, and I think it is in everyone's interest that the GNWT be transparent about what it is and isn't willing to do. The GNWT, in that legislation, commits that Indigenous rights are not frozen in time; they are capable of evolution and growth. We have heard that if that is true, then cede and surrender language in agreements is not...