Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is an area that has been covered many times here with respect to whether or not, in fact, there's been a conclusion around competitiveness or non-competitiveness. And, Mr. Speaker, certainly one has to consider the fact that if there are no mines or less mines then there's no worry about there being any benefits because there won't be any benefits. There will be less benefits or no benefits. So, yes, the fact that there's going to be some disagreement on this one, I think, between the Member and I. That said, again, the feedback and response that we've...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, right now there's actually two contracts, and individually I believe they both come under the limits for what is permissible for sole sourcing; however, they are going to one individual or one entity. So I'm certainly live to the reasons for that and very live to the reasons why a department would want to use a sole source. One of them is where the party or entity that you're contracting to is really is the only or essentially the only entity or person who can do certain work. In this case, models are, as I understand it, maybe not quite proprietary but...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm glad the Member got my name right. It was the Minister of mines earlier and that of course doesn't exist. There is the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Investment, sometimes known as Minister for the economy for which I'm responsible for the mineral resources sector and all of the work to get the Mineral Resources Act implemented, the mineral resources regulations ready to go. And in the process of doing that, one part of that is the royalties and for that purpose, Mr. Speaker, there was a fivemonth long process, as the Member's made the point of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said, at this point, Mr. Speaker, having received feedback and being aware of interest in the area over the last six years, the department is at the point of being able to do the modeling and to be able to then take that, develop a policy, and develop it in concert, of course, with the Intergovernmental Council and the technical working group with whom we've been developing the Mineral Resources Act regulations from the start. It's part of a codevelopment process. They will make some decisions as a group. That will be what determines what the drafting instructions...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, these were specifically intended to gather information from prospector licensing holders because, of course, they're asking questions along the lines of "do you agree with adopting the PDAC exploration assessment digital data form EADDF for work assessment reports for data submission and digital format including PDF reports or other acceptable files, metadata, spatial map locations, geophysics submissions, including raw field data." Mr. Speaker, the average member of the public does not want to be answering that question. It would not be appropriate. It was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, to the translators, I am sorry; I will try to slow down.

Mr. Speaker, I take issue with the continued characterization of an engagement process as "secret." This has been since 2017 that we have been going out and talking about the Mineral Resource Act and its regulations, before I even came in here. And part of the concern was raised in 2019, when are you going to start to do something and stop keep going and doing consultation processes? We hear that all the time. And, yet, ITI is out doing both public meetings, engagements, forums, sessions, surveys, and...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I mean, there certainly are funds from CanNor that do come through at various points for various initiatives. Let me see if the deputy minister can speak to whether she knows what they may have funded for the City of Yellowknife.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I completely agree. There is the Tourism NWT conference bureau that sits within NWT Tourism. What I'd suggest is perhaps ensuring that there's a more direct connection between the conference bureau, which admittedly was not seeing a significant amount of incoming conferences here during COVID but is back to work now and looking forward. So perhaps making sure that they can confirm with me, again on my list of things I want to talk to them about, that they have a direct liaison to the Town of Fort Smith and to the facilities that are there. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me turn that to the deputy minister just to point to which line item it'll be under, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Only to further echo what the Premier's already said. Gender equity unit, just to be very clear, replaces what was formerly known as the women's advisory office, which had exactly one person working in it which is not a whole lot of horsepower to deal with when you have the breadth of matters that come through. As the Premier said, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the response to the national action plan comes through gender equity as is work in terms of training departments on genderbased analysis as well as work in terms of intimate partner violence...