Rylund Johnson

I think that was a maybe, Mr. Speaker. And I get that when things are going through the Cabinet process, there's Cabinet confidentiality and you can't, as a Minister, you know, expose the outcome of that. I guess I'm trying to understand what is going to Cabinet potentially or could possibly. My understanding is we version one was an Indigenous employment policy and then a diversity and inclusion policy which added a number of new categories, including P2 and disability and sexuality and racialized persons. That was version 1. We went out, engaged on that. Version 2 essentially dropped the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Affirmative Action Policy that the GNWT has been in place for about 40 years and has seen little improvement in increasing Indigenous people. And, Mr. Speaker, I think before any review is conducted by the government, they have to ask themselves whether they're willing to actually make changes.

The Affirmative Action Policy is a bit of a political bombshell, Mr. Speaker, because I think there is broad agreement that everybody wants Indigenous Northerners to be priority one. And then, really, the question becomes what to do about P2s. And if the government is going to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Bill 92, An Act to Amend the Petroleum Products and Carbon Tax Act, No. 3, received second reading in the Legislative Assembly on June 1st, 2023, and was referred to the Standing Committee on Government Operations for review. The standing committee held a public hearing with the Minister of Finance on June 27th, 2023, and held the clausebyclause review on July 28th, 2023.

I thank the committee for their work in reviewing this legislation. Individual Members may have additional comments or questions. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yeah, I'm sorry, everyone. I get where the Member's coming from. I know the government now has a standard kind of period for reviewing regulations. But I view this as no different than annual reports or mandatory legislative reviews. What happens is you get as a bill comes through the Assembly, you get sometimes these clauses are added, they have different wording, and then you find yourself where the government just has different obligations across a number of Acts. And when you look at them all, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's just that one Member happened to get agreement from the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I really do not like leaving things to the next Assembly. I think if you look at the last Assembly's mandate, a lot of the things that were very close, and it's clear hundreds of hours of staff time went into them and, you know, there was perhaps some last minute disagreement. Never got done. We didn't take them on. They didn't make it into our mandate. And all of that work disappeared. There's quite a few things in our mandate that I'm sure the next Assembly will let die as well. I'm hoping that the Business Incentive Policy is not one of them. So my question is for...

Yeah, thank you. Can I just confirm I think before that this was money administered on behalf of others and then we changed the financial reporting, and it shows up this way. And essentially we're just holding this money for the communities and these fluctuations are based on how we get it out the door, is that correct? Thank you.

Yeah, I understand we've been asking the federal government for money for this so they must have a guess of what it's going to cost. And actually at one point, the Minister Vandal said that the money was very close. Like, he almost said he was giving it to us. I think it was coming out of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. So I'm assuming the feds know how much the project costs. And I mean, I don't know how they can if we haven't picked a route but they must know something. Are the feds giving us any money for Taltson any time soon, or did that kind of disappear with this whole first we have to...

Thank you. You know, I think this requires a very fulsome public debate. How much are we selling the power for? How much power are we selling? How long how many mines do we need to exist to buy it? What's the payback? You know, what is what are these projects doing in other jurisdictions? How much are their cost overruns? How much is it roughly going to cost? I just can't believe I'm being asked for money without any of that information. I guess can I have how much money right now is the government asking for this Taltson Expansion preconstruction? Thank you.

Yeah, you know, I don't want it in confidence. I think this is just completely undemocratic. We're heading into an election, and the next Assembly has to make the decision to do the same thing we did where you put the three major infrastructure projects in your mandate or to pick one. And there's strong arguments on either side. You know, there is some argument the way you get these built is you just kind of always keep them on the books and you play the lottery with the feds and, you know, you try and get the money based on what their priorities are. There's also an argument that maybe we...

Thank you. I see we have some preconstruction engineering regulatory activities for Taltson Expansion preconstruction. Do we have a rough cost estimate of what we think the Taltson Expansion will cost? Thank you.