Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I look forward to getting these out there and I think they give something for the public to have a conversation about. They give, you know, something for Regular MLAs to talk to Indigenous governments about. They allow us to have some sort of negotiation conversation in public. But to me, this I would view this as step one. I reviewed the federal principles and interests. You know, there's not a lot of controversy in what they say but then they went, and they made a lot of significant changes to their negotiating mandates on very specific things, you know, such as...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess just I'd like to reflect back on how we got here. We all we got elected, and we came together in a room and created our priority document. And I think since that time, there's been a lot of discussion about probably having less priorities. And I guess I will just frame that as a comment for future Assemblies, that if you make everything a priority then, you know, nothing is a priority.

But then that priority document was given to Cabinet and different than the last Assembly, this is truly a Cabinet's mandate. There was lots of collaboration with Regular Members...

In favour.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that and, you know, I get that certain positions perhaps need the oneoff policy, but I think we could really be a leader here and we could find positions and pilot a fourday workweek. Perhaps it's a it's a summer Fridays model, which is becoming more common. And then I think we would need to do it as a pilot project and evaluate things such as, you know, were less sick days taken; was there a decline in productivity. I know many workplaces have actually found that it would increase in productivity when shifting to a fourday workweek. So I think we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Firstly, I would also like to apologize. I'll get a hold of the Minister, and we'll schedule those briefings as soon as possible.

I'm looking at the contract services budget here, and I'll note that last fiscal's actuals we spent $97,000 out of 868, about 10 percent, of the budget. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that's because that was COVID and we didn't deliver a lot of the school of government programming in person as we intended.

Can the Minister just tell us about this upcoming fiscal and whether we're going to spend all of those that contract services...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I sure hope the Minister answers my written question then.

I guess, you know, there is no secret that all municipalities across Canada are experiencing very tough pressures on their infrastructure, and it's no secret that we as a government are also doing that. I'll note there's a number of relatively well, no, there's a number of massive kind of federal programmings funding community infrastructure right now. Some have different expiration dates, and quite a few of them flow through GNWT.

Can the Minister speak to any kind of lobbying efforts or work we're doing with...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll have a couple of questions on community municipal infrastructure gap.

I see there's about a $1.3 million increase here. Can I just well, can I just clarify firstly. Are we going to meet our goal of closing the municipal funding gap by $5 million, and can the Minister speak to how that works with the formula that actually factors in a number of cost increases over time into the gap? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I am very happy to hear that, and I know that there will be a number of contractors who are familiar with those the likely people who will bid on that RFP and have worked with them across the North in different territories, and I think we ease the workload of those people at the Office of the Fire Marshal by doing that. So I look forward to seeing that RFP.

I wanted to talk about the contract services line item here of $30 million. I'm going I'm quite confident that this is the flood money. Can I just get an update on when we expect to have completed our...

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I've spoken about many times, we are the only place in Canada that doesn't employ building inspectors. We take one small part of the building code, and we give it to the Office of the Fire Marshal. But, you know, compared to Yukon and Nunavut or anywhere else, we don't actually apply the whole National Building Code and we don't really develop that expertise. And I know the Fire Prevention Act is scheduled. I heard the Minister speak during corporate services about all the work they are doing to find policy staff.

I'm just I'm still slightly unsure about what the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yeah, I and I know that the department and whenever we're looking to bring a vaccine into public funded, there's a bit of a debate, you know, about most vaccines that save us money in healthcare costs in the long term if they prevent hospitalizations we save money in the long term. And with shingles, in this case we would save people a lot of pain. I'm just wondering if the department has any evidence that or has done any of the research about whether extending this vaccine to everyone would actually save the health system money? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.