Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So there certainly is I mean, there's going to be some work that is still underway that for example, there's still management of assets. There's still monitoring of areas where interest is being held. The staff in Inuvik are also working on the mineral development mineral resources mineral resource regulations development. There is M18, as noted. So it's not necessarily a traditional sense of out drilling oil rigs. There's still a fair bit of work that needs to be undertaken and that is undertaken by this office. And as I'm saying this, there's a flood of information...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I don't think there's an active recruitment for staffing right now, but I can say that there's quite a bit of work happening with the Tu Cho Fishers Cooperative as well as with FFMC to ensure that those players and parties are all involved, that there's no overlapping work going on but that, in fact, everyone's working together. The goal, again, is to have this plant open and operational for the fishing season, including with having a manager and including having the staffing available. I, in fact, only spoke to FTI about this yesterday and had a very...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I'd like to send this to the deputy minister to give a bit more of a sense about where it's been and where it's going. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am well aware that there are other fish plants and thrilled that there are other fish plants. We are not even remotely close to meeting our quota of fishing of freshwater fish here in the Northwest Territories. There's ample opportunity. If anything, I think our challenge is more on the side of having more fishers. And we certainly will make that point to raise this issue. I think the deputy minister actually may have an opportunity as early as tomorrow. If this comes up, she's at FFMC's meeting tomorrow just to make that they are aware of the complexity of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, Mr. Chair, this again, this is funding that's under the mineral petroleum resources portion of ITI's funding, which I would note gets 26.8 percent of the budget whereas the economic diversification and business support services gets 30.8 percent of the budget. So there may well be some funding that's available under those areas or perhaps through various other departments in the Government of the Northwest Territories that provide supports to Indigenous governments. Thank you.

 Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I am happy to speak about the fish plant. There is quite a lot of activity underway and senior members from the department were, in fact, in Hay River just recently, and we are still anticipating a summer or early spring opening to the fish plant. It'll be commissioned in the spring with an opening to follow I believe in line with the summer fishing season. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, that is something that is a ITI lead but it is worked on, as I mentioned earlier, a shared area with Department of ENR as well. And right now it's under ITI as there's a discussion paper out for comment and review, and it would certainly be helpful if more people would look at it and provide their comments and feedback to it. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, this touches on finance as well because this is an area that's going to potentially drive our future economy.

I have to say we did have the opportunity to comment on the federal critical minerals metals strategy before it was final, and I would suggest there are a lot of elements in there that I think reflect exactly on the submission that we made and reflect exactly on what we wanted to see in terms of being a strategy that is now high level. The next step, obviously, proof is in the pudding where are they going to spend their dollars? Those...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, the final version of the critical minerals strategy is still fairly new. I think it was only within the last year they've been doing some consultations on it. And obviously it's difficult for me to say precisely what we hope the federal government may or may not do. What I can say, Madam Speaker, is at this point we have put ourselves in position to be at the second round of tables. They are conducting national resource energy tables right now, "they, the federal government. And we were not initially on round two but we are now. And that process has...

Madam Speaker, I think my first two answers were already long so I'm going to try and get this one shorter, but this one could be longer than the last two.

I'm happy to say that really, we have a lot of those policies. And I certainly wouldn't want the fact that we are now at the next stage of really developing our attention on Indigenous hiring, and of being a representative workforce, to lose sight again of the fact that we do now have the Indigenous Recruitment and Retention Framework. In that, there are action items, and within all of that as well and in conjunction with that, we still have...