Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On my left is Bill MacKay, the deputy minister of finance. And on my right Mandi Bolstad, deputy secretary to the financial management board.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is firstly a shared initiative between different departments and one where we've -- although Infrastructure has been the lead under the element of being an energy -- the energy lead, ECC and ITI are both also engaged from the GNWT's perspective. One of the critical steps that we had to undertake was to ensure that we were properly engaged in aligning with priorities from the Council of Leaders and meeting therefore with IGOs and, indeed, the next step, I'm told and, in fact, is to take the -- what we've got from this group now to industry, and I expect...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, yes, it is being pursued. However, the circumstance that we found ourselves in, as the weather was starting to turn and as the location where some individuals were had been using as an encampment had another purpose assigned to it, namely, for public housing, a situation -- or a solution had to be found more quickly. So, again, another shout-out, really, to the non-profit sector for working very closely with the GNWT. A very lengthy and thorough review was done of every possible location in the city from hotels to available units and that's where these...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am here to present Tabled Document 200-20(1), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025. And I'll do a brief introduction to that before going to the next.

This document proposes a total increase of $236,000, comprised of the following items:

A $50,000 transfer of previously approved operations expenditure funding to infrastructure expenditure, allocated for the purchase of digital dispatch consoles;

$993,000 for increased construction costs associated with the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk fibre line;

$1.95 million to finalize the transfer...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the Property Assessment and Taxation Act is what makes the Department of Finance or Minister of Finance the taxation authority. We establish the mill rates. We collect the taxes, provide MACA with a list of those tax dollars that are collected for those communities that are taxable -- taxation communities, then MACA distributes the grant monies that are equivalent to the actual amount of those property taxes that are collected back to the community less an administration fee, and that's -- does come in at an average of $600,000. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this was an initiative of the federal government meant to provide a vehicle by which provinces and territories could explain our priorities for the federal government and hopefully to be a pathway to unlocking federal investment. It was a bit slow getting off the ground. There was back and forths about how to get organized and who should be on the tables. But I am pleased to say that the GNWT was part of the second round of these tables that were launched originally and that they have been fairly active now since the spring of 2024 in order to scope out...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, it's not, Mr. Chair. I think there's some discussions underway to see if there's somewhere we might find some funding, but this is currently fully funded by the GNWT. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents: Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2024-2025; and Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditure), No. 1, 2024-2025. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I believe that this is actually a multi-year agreement with the federal government. I believe, in fact, a four-year agreement. Thank you. So yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I don't know if I have that kind of detail here. I mean, this was work that was planned for Highway No. 3. There are regular patrols done of all the highways and then planned works get done along a fairly complicated schedule that -- or complicated chart that I certainly have looked at and seen semi-regularly that shows every single highway in the North, all of the different areas of need, and ranks all of them. So this one would have come through that process, and then it was a matter of determining which types of funding are available from the federal...