Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at least two residents of Yellowknife South here. I'm not sure, I can't see who is behind me, so I hope I don't miss anyone. But happy to recognize Nicole Sock who is a resident of Yellowknife South here in the gallery today. And, also,.we have a page here from Yellowknife South, Quinian Boettger who is joining us and offering us much assistance. I promise to send extra notes today, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we had launched a few years ago the Indigenous Recruitment and Retention Framework of it and that had two key goals associated with it. The one is to increase Indigenous representation, full stop, in the public service. A number of goals and a number of actions therein, everything from creating and ensuring that there's employment opportunities, that there are no barriers, speaking with the Indigenous Employees Advisory Committee about what barriers they may observe, putting in Indigenous employment plans for every department. Different departments have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd be very happy to get that breakdown of information. The career development program -- or gateway program has been quite successful. It's now went from being undersubscribed to oversubscribed which is a problem we like to have. But I don't have the numbers in front of me. I will certainly get them to the Member quite quickly. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the work being done by our regional and divisional staff when it comes to supporting supply chain success in the territory. As you know, our resupply operations on the Mackenzie River faced significant challenges last season due to low water levels, disrupting the transportation of goods and fuel to communities in the Sahtu. The Government of the Northwest Territories, through the Department of Infrastructure's fuel services division, oversees the Petroleum Products Program, which manages the purchase, transport, and storage of fuel in 16 communities...

Mr. Speaker, when the decision was made to lease it out and to have it remediated by that leaseholder, the intention was that the leaseholder could make whatever choices initially that they wanted about what they would do with that building. Likely office space, commercial, commercial space, but not bound necessarily to turn it back into any kind of health facility. That would, of course, require the health department to be planning to go back in there and initially that was not the plan. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this, again -- more than happy to say if we want to admit wrongdoing, that looking back ten years ago we don't have all of the records that we should have in order to explain that decision. None of us were here. I wasn't here.

What I can say, Mr. Speaker, to the best of the knowledge today, at the time in 2014, the plan that health and social services was to build a new and standalone long-term care facility, and then when that project would have been ready to move forward closer, if I recall correctly, to the 2019, 2020 -- or rather 2020, the situation had...

Either way, Mr. Speaker, on this one, thank you for the question. Mr. Speaker, this report from the auditor general, every single other recommendation the GNWT has accepted. It's singularly around the classification of the Liwego'ati Building as being whether a P3 or not a P3 that we continue to have this issue. If it is a commercial lease, we do not report any of our commercial leases publicly. They are proprietary information to the landlord. Because we have classified this one as a commercial lease, it is proprietary information, it is reported by constituency, by community, as every other...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't want to presuppose the work of the committee with respect to how the action plan is being formed and what it will contain or its detail. There is a lot of work happening across departments. We are all contributing to being part of the work on behalf of the GNWT as being just one Member at that table. So, Mr. Speaker, and I don't want to also -- to take away from the fact that the GNWT has bilateral agreements with multiple Indigenous governments and that we also sit at Council of Leaders and at IGCS. So there's a great deal of integration within the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, I agree, an excellent question and appreciate it, Mr. Speaker, and there will be divergence of views on this. I recognize that. It is an area that when we did engagement over a year and some, 2023-2024, it's an area that I, frankly, found interesting to read and learn more about. There is, again, divergence of view on it. But one of the views that the Department of Finance has here ultimately adopted is that folks who may experience some form of disability don't want to have to self-disclose in order to be able to gain advantage, and so what we would...

Mr. Speaker, again, I am happy to be able to report as soon as we are paving that runway, we will be chip sealing this portion of the Inuvik Bypass Road. Thank you.