Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, so this is to do with the low water events of the last couple of years. So there's a couple of different tools that are used to manage low water. One is the rate stabilization fund that people would contribute to in small portions over the course of time and to which the GNWT at times has to contribute to maintain that fund, but -- and this is the second year of funding where in order to maintain the fund to the level required by the public utilities board, the GNWT has stepped in to support because the drawdown has been more significant than what was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is part of what gets approved by the public utilities board are the term and conditions of sale both for the generation component that tends to be exclusively done by the Northwest Territories Power Corporation as well as the distribution that is done both by NTPC as well as Naka Power, and regulated utilities in Canada are not permitted to reimburse customers for damages. That is one of the standard situations that everyone in Canada does find themselves at. Regulated utilities in Canada are only allowed to charge customers for the costs to operate...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, this came forward through the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to support the fact that Indigenous children in schools across the Northwest Territories were going to be very directly impacted. 205 positions from across the Northwest Territories were being immediately affected with this first year of denials coming from the federal government. And there were certainly a large number of students affected here in Yellowknife because there's a great deal of Indigenous students here in Yellowknife. We have 50 percent of the population. So while it...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, on my left, deputy minister of finance Bill MacKay. And on my right Julie Mujcin, the comptroller general.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, there is -- I would sort of direct, if you may, the Member and others interested to the Healthy Food for Learning foods program that is in the national school food program which has a one-year action plan here for 2024-2025. That is now being actioned and funded through this funding, and then the funding is allocated to different education bodies at different rates depending upon the I presume the size, although again I don't have the breakdown as to exactly whether it's entirely based on, you know, just pure numbers or some other qualitative assessment...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to present to the House Bill 32, An Act to Amend the Public Service Act, No. 2, to be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, every dollar that we are speaking about, whether it's potentially the $14 million that we're requesting here now or every dollar that flows through education, culture and employment to the boards are public funds that are appropriated here for the purposes of delivering education. So I, you know, certainly would suggest that to the extent that a school board has some additional capacity, when there's a rainy day this may itself be the rainy day. So they would then potentially have more ability to draw a larger number of education assistants under the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, this particular gap-filling exercise was focused on support assistants specifically. I understand there may be other work happening between education, culture and employment and health and social services to assist in the space of speech pathologists for example, but this specifically is for supporting of the support assistants. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's a lot of people asking the federal government that very question. I'm not the federal government. What we are recognized, the Arctic Energy Security Corridor was formally recognized as a project of national interest, so there was five projects that are in it the first sort of -- if you're calling it tiers, they're in the first group of projects that were named as national projects. That is important for the projects that need to go through the Bill C5 process. Being named there gives them access to the schedule 2 or schedule 1 which changes how they...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Unfortunately, I can't say with certainty. I mean, obviously the first step is for the boards to confirm the acceptance of a contribution agreement for the funding, which as was noted earlier there are still some boards that are in discussions with ECE as to whether or what amount of a surplus would be appropriate for them to provide in support of this program. So until that is concluded, I won't have a number as to how many are, in fact, successful in being hired or rehired. Thank you.