Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That line item is just for existing winter roads. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The first thing after we can figure out that this building is usable and what is going to be left of it, we would probably do a departmental search first and see if there is any use with any of the departments in the Government of the Northwest Territories. We would have to figure out what the incremental costs would be subject to them moving into there.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. What I am talking about, I am talking about the deficiencies that are left on the road that have to be completed, and the major part of that is the 14 kilometres of top gravel that needs to be done on the Tuktoyaktuk end of the highway. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I can't give you an exact number, but I can tell you that we have met with a number of stakeholders and interested parties that want to invest in the Northwest Territories, and the ones that are investing here are glad to see the hard work that this government is doing on a number of these files, as I have said, since devolution.

We have taken over the LPs or the land and resource part of this from the federal government. It is going to create more certainty for the mining industry to come to the Northwest Territories, and we will continue to engage all residents, stakeholders, and industry on...

As the Member knows, we have all sat down with all of the Indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories, and one of the number one priorities of this Premier and this Assembly is to address land claims in the Northwest Territories. The Premier has done a tremendous amount of work on this file. We have made substantive offers to two of the three outstanding land claimant groups in the Northwest Territories, and we are working on getting something with the third one. There is some significant progress being made there. The recent announcements with the federal government on how they are...

Mr. Speaker, investments in effective and resilient infrastructure provide the foundation for a stronger North. Through infrastructure improvements, we can better connect communities to services they rely on, while mitigating the cost of living and doing business. Replacing or upgrading our assets increases our resiliency to the impacts of climate change and as we expand our infrastructure, we will support important economic development that provides residents with well-paying jobs and training opportunities.

Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories has often worked in...

Early in the life of this government, I was the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, so I am quite aware of the protected area strategies moving forward. This was something that was under the federal legislation, and now it has been switched over to the Northwest Territories, and we are moving on those fronts. It is a complicated file. It's not like we can just shelve all of the protected area strategies that the federal government was working on. These are led by a number of Indigenous governments, the areas that they want to protect, and it is a complicated issue.

As I have said...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are doing quite a bit. We get a lot of heat sometimes for going to some of the shows that we go to in the press. We have been to Mineral Roundup. The Premier and I have just been to PDAC, but it is one of the reasons that this government has developed a Mineral Development Strategy, and that is to address some of these inconsistencies that people have about the Northwest Territories. The 17th Assembly had signed on to devolution, and that gives us the tools that we need to change a lot of legislation to help us address some of these things, be it the Mineral Resource...

To those comments, I want to say a couple of things, first of all, before I talk about the Mineral Resource Act. I have talked to many exploration companies and mining companies in the Northwest Territories, and this, for the most part, this is a very fictitious story, that our regulatory process is one that hinders exploration and development in the NWT. Yes, it has certainty around it. We have the federal side of it that we are trying to get control of through devolution. The Aboriginal governments have their process, but, at the end of the day, when you go through our process, it is lengthy...

As the Member knows, we have our staff within ITI to help them do that, but every time I have been to either Roundup or PDAC, I have made specific trips to Toronto to meet with industry stakeholders about investing in the Northwest Territories. It became quite clear to me early on, when I got this portfolio, about lack of information around devolution in particular, about the land and resources being transferred from the federal government to the Government of the Northwest Territories, that everywhere we go, no matter which one of us sits on this side of the House, we continually have to...