Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am mindful of time so I will try and be quick, but there's different -- different cost pressures affecting each of these winter roads. So the Mackenzie Valley winter road right now is over 900 kilometers of road. There's -- there -- notwithstanding the fact that barges went through -- more so in the last year, there's still obviously some communities that were experiencing reductions in the barging services. And so there's been a much greater uptake this winter on fuel -- on demand on the winter road, as well a shipment of -- up to Colville Lake with long...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's just over $1 million that provides for compensation and benefits as well as the establishment of those positions. I mean, there's often associated startup costs for a new position but the remainder 7.2 -- just over $7.2 million is contributions to emergency shelters in Yellowknife, Hay River, Inuvik, and Fort Simpson. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, Mr. Speaker, they may sound like different things; the two certainly are linked. The one project does depends on the other. The other -- they each depend on one another, and it is well accepted that the routing on both sides will need to align at the border in order to make this truly a corridor that impacts all of this country. So as a national corridor, it makes sense that it's going to connect.

Mr. Speaker, I have often been asked to speak on the corridor over the last couple of years and when I am, I can say that typically representatives from the West Kitikmeot...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's actually the freezing rain that -- the humidity and freezing rain that we had back in -- I don't remember the month exactly, but it was early this fall where when we have conditions on the runways or conditions at the airport that are -- that result as -- again, particularly with freezing rain or wet snow earlier or heavier snow earlier in the season, that is what changes it. So typically in a year you can have just as -- and I don't have a year-over-year comparison but just by way of some notes, there would be, you know, three or four unusual type events such as...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. At this point, we're anticipating just shy of $80.5 million. There's an original budget of $20.9 million, and there was a supplementary appropriation this past fall and some recoveries, but all of which together totals out, as I say, to about just shy of $80.5. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I presume the billions being referenced are the recent advanced procurement announcement that were out online not too long ago. Mr. Speaker, to my knowledge, those two items are both directed at the airports predominantly, both in Inuvik and in Yellowknife, and are not tied to nor necessarily, you know, dependent upon what may be happening with the Arctic Economic Security Corridor. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I won't speak to whether it's scads or not. There's -- I mean, we have the remote work policy but there's also a lot of folks who do work from home in not necessarily formalized arrangements or agreements, and the challenge -- and it has slowed the work in terms of trying to realign lease footprints because that would then -- if we really realign what the lease footprint is for departments, that reduces the amount of workspace available. But if people are working from home in an -- sort of in an unofficial or un-organized sense, for lack of a better description, then they...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Firstly, yes, investments in having technology that is modern and secure is good value for money. Only in the last few years, really, we brought a lot of our systems up to speed with respect to cyber security from a place where they were, you know, really behind a lot of other jurisdictions in Canada to being at the front end of what's available for cyber security requirements. And given the impact on people's information, on data on the services they depend upon, I would suggest that is very important.

With respect to that said, some of the -- some of the drivers of the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, Mr. Speaker, there is a very detailed business case that looks at different types of structures for this project. There's two parts to it. There's the transmission line that connects our north and south hydro grids, and the second part would be utilizing water that's already in the reservoir and that's not currently being used to generate more power. There's the opportunity to bring Indigenous governments into this project, make them owners of the project, figuring out what kind of equity sources they have and what might backstop, what kinds of funds stacks they...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, there is right now, in progress, work to convert MTS to a Crown corporation and it -- otherwise -- I mean, I do want to emphasize for folks in smaller communities and, you know, up the Mackenzie Valley up into the High Arctic that it is recognized that the barge resupply is an essential service which makes it difficult to simply run it as one might a private company, and that's where the decision was ultimately made to try to convert it to a Crown corporation, the hope being, Mr. Chair, that we can make -- take advantage of some of what are efficiencies in a...