Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Welcome back, everyone. It's truly an honour to be sitting in this House once again. I would like to begin by thanking everyone, our citizens, my colleagues, our public servants. I do not know when people sleep, honestly. Everyone has been working so hard, and it's been amazing.

The World Health Organization said, "In a pandemic, you must move quickly, and that won't always be perfect." I believe that's what we have done. We are one of few places on Earth with no active cases of COVID-19, Mr. Speaker. We are in the midst of a global pandemic which is no doubt a tragedy...

Thank you. Just one final thing. I will send the link to the Minister and her team, but could you put all of the Department of Infrastructure's policies on your website? I recognize there are executive policies, departmental policies, and then there are the procurement guidelines and all of the capital projects that lie with Finance, but I know, somewhere buried in the Department of Infrastructure, there are guidelines on how exactly we are choosing to build buildings.

From what I can see, we have slowly been creating these shell, fake, northern companies, that are actually southern companies...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I want to distinguish between P3s and design-builds here. Projects over $50 million under the P3 policy; that's in Finance. I have issues with P3s, but if I have issues, I bring them to Finance. It's that $1-million to $50-million range. To me, that's Infrastructure's bread and butter, and if I am going to look at what has happened in the history of the North, as we have made a transition from design-bid-build to design-build and what that has done is there are only select firms that can bid on design-builds. I think the honorariums that we are giving out just...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I am always a little confused about the role of Finance and the role of Infrastructure. When I look at the Department of Infrastructure's policies, I see three policies: the Infrastructure Establishment Policy; the Disposal of Goods Policy; and the Disposal of Improved Real Property. Are there other policies in the Department of Infrastructure that exist? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are a number of projects expected under asset management: highway projects; there are schools, Sissons; a school in Tuktoyaktuk, Behchoko, Colville Lake. I am also looking at the line here, design and technical services of $3,800,000. Would the Minister be able to give me a sense of what proportion of that design and technical services went to BIP businesses? Would the Minister have that? Thank you, Madam Chair.

I look forward to seeing that public dashboard and what kind of scientific evidence is put on there, as well as seeing the transition modelling. I hope to see that sooner rather than later. A request: often, when our government publishes data, they don't actually do it with a data set or give you access to the open data. Sometimes, it's just a PDF. Sometimes, it's a nice graph, but, obviously, there is always some underlying data there. My question for the Minister is: in that public dashboard, can we contain access to the actual underlying data in an open format?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have no doubt that the Chief Public Health Officer has been making numerous decisions on data, and we've heard that today. We have heard numerous requests, from Members and the media and the public, to see some of that data. I recognize are is some issues with modelling, but firstly, I just want to get a sense of our capacity to really be making evidence-based decisions. I was hoping the Minister of Health could tell me how many people specializing in epidemiology we have on staff?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I will build onto this. I look at the procurement guidelines, and it appears that the Department of Finance doesn't really seem to have an opinion on this in the procurement guidelines. They are worried about the financial side. If you guys decide you want to construct something that way, they'll go put the contracts together. I don't see a prohibition against Infrastructure creating a preference to design-bid-builds.

I also don't see anything in the procurement guidelines that would prohibit the Department of Infrastructure from creating a policy that sets out...

I think this is a problem across departments. When you go to their websites and you look at the policies that they're responsible for, none of them are complete across departments. I'll just make that as a note to Ministers that I would like to know all of the policies, because there are the procurement guidelines in Finance, and I think that that is the biggest driver here. Finance, to me, is really the driver of procurement, despite us constantly asking Infrastructure questions. Does the department have a policy on design-build versus design-bid-build, and do we have a preference or a...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate that. I recognize I don't need it necessarily for this specific issue. Glancing at the list, I just know offhand that a number of these went over tender and they never actually were awarded to northern businesses. I think there is this disconnect in that I know BIP is in ITI, and I know much of the procurement is in Finance and then some of it is in Infrastructure.

At the end of the day, I would like if the Minister could give me a sense of, in this Infrastructure project, the contracts we are actually putting out at the end of the day that actually go to...