Caitlin Cleveland

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a collaborative table with all jurisdictions across Canada, and it's a collaborative table that I am very proud to be part of. As a group, the committee on internal trade has set four key recommendations across the country, and they include enhancing commitments under the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, and that includes conducting a rapid review of all party's specific exceptions, prioritizing mutual recognition on priority goods and sectors to reduce regulatory and administrative burdens, Mr. Speaker. It includes facilitating...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, if possible, one of the things that I'm going to do today is swap out different staff when we get to different sections and so maybe we can come back around to that when we get to the petroleum -- minerals and petroleum resources section of the main estimates today. Thank you.

No, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can promise this House it was not for lack of trying. As the Member also would have seen in the same news article, we weren't alone in resigning that agreement with Canada. That agreement is to the tune of $80 million over the lifespan of that agreement, and it is very difficult to say no to $80 million that supports families with young children to access childcare.

I absolutely acknowledge what the Member is saying about the fact that there are challenges with that program and the implementation of it in the Northwest Territories, issues that I...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, companies like Dene Fur Cloud are a subsidiary of Prosper NWT so is not counted in that previous area that I identified. So there a number of subsidiaries that Prosper NWT does support, and they are certainly for-profit companies, and Prosper NWT is working with them to continue to develop their business practices. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, that initiative is focused on really investment attraction for critical minerals. This past week, on Sunday night at PDAC in Toronto, we were able to host an event in conjunction with Nunavut and the Yukon, and it was incredibly well attended by both politicians, investment individuals, and business owners. And so we hope to continue to build off that momentum. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, we had a number of communities evacuated and the -- our parks ended up being used as evacuation spots and ended up seeing a significant increase in incidents in our parks in the territory. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's very difficult for me to base all of my answers on hypothetical. I think what the college is looking at doing is exploring how this works for Northerners, and I would expect that they would be consistently evaluating this shift and this change.

The other thing that was referenced today was different opportunities that communities are taking advantage of with additional partnerships both through Indigenous governments and through community governments. And I think that those will continue to flourish in the territory as well. We do have relationships through Dechinta...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, between April 2005 to March 2024, Prosper NWT has supported 741 businesses across the Northwest Territories. So I certainly couldn't list them all out here but -- and then through those 741 businesses, they have disbursed approximately $128 million. But it might be of interest to Members -- and mind you these are regional areas, not political areas -- but:

162 businesses from the South Slave, that was 40 percent of the funds disbursed, $52 million;

386 businesses in the North Slave, that was $30 million, or 24 percent of funds disbursed;

60...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through yourself, I'd like to pass to assistant deputy minister Cyr.