Steve Norn

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the response. If I could just get the Minister to find out a little bit more, it will be good to know if there is any overlap for this, and I want to make sure that we are spending our money wisely within our departments. Mahsi.

Thank you for that answer. I imagine, for the patient stuff, that budget will be a lot higher. Just to be clear, this travel budget here is for staff for HSS travel? Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going back to page 171 now, Madam Chair. There is a line item for contract services. Back from the 2018-2019 actuals, it was at $8.4 million, approximately. It spiked up to over almost $25 million. Now, we are back down to $22 million. Can the Minister just explain a little bit how that came about and the reasons why we are at the number we are at today? Marsi.

Marsi cho, Madam Chair. Just a quick statement. With this COVID pandemic, a lot of our mains that we are going to be reviewing, the complexion is going to completely changed. I think, again, this is going to be no different. I just reviewed. I am probably going to go back and forth a little bit, though I will try not to be too confusing. If you could turn your page to 172, there is a line item here for Rockhill Apartments. My question here: we are very sad of what happened here, by the way, with Rockhill. It was a good program. My constituents used that building, and it's no longer here. My...

Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker, and Marsi cho to the Minister of Finance for those responses. I listened very carefully to those responses, and some of the feedback that I got from some of our Indigenous leaders in my riding was that these amounts were still way too high. If we get six of us going into a liquor store, I'm going to make an example of say, Hay River, and then we go into one of the surrounding communities, we could still have a party for a very, very long time. Do you know what I mean? These amounts are still very high.

I guess my second part of that question: have there been any specific...

Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize our interpreters for Chipweyan. I would like to thank Tom Unka and Arthur Beck. They are coming up from Deninu Kue. Marsi cho for your service. [English translation not available]. Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair, nothing further.

Thank you for that response. Something else that I want to make a quick comment about, about suicide, it is something that has always plagued our people up in the North. For me, personally, I lost two uncles, and it hit the family very hard. I know that we do what we can to put funding in. I just want to know a little bit more about this community-based suicide prevention. It says here on page 172 that it's funding to support suicide prevention projects, groups, workshops, after-school programs, and land-based programs. It says after-school programs. Has there been any work or kind of joint...

Thank you, Madam Chair, another sticky cost at the hospital that we've incurred. My other quick question here was with travel. The complexion of all this is going to change. We're not going to be travelling a whole lot for the next while. If there is any surplus for this year, would that just go back into the consolidated revenue fund? Thank you.

Thank you for the response again. I guess where I want to go with this is I want to get some assurances for people of the LKDFN and their business interests, to make sure that they get this up and running, because I think enough is enough. I think two months to get this up and running is far too long. I know that, if I was running a small business and if I had to start up, I would go under right now, so all this is really unacceptable. My next question is: what will the Minister do to resolve this issue so that community-owned businesses continue to operate under the same licensing terms and...