Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to do justice to the process that is undertaken. There is a risk-based analysis that's done. It's done -- it comes up through -- from frontline department staff through to each individual department. There is a peer review process that then goes on where the ranking is reviewed, it goes to an ADM committee where it's again reviewed, and only at that point projects that make it through that process with sufficiently high ranking go on to the deputy ministers and then ultimately on to the financial management board to determine which project might...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate that question. NTPC is very conscious of the fact that they play such a critical role in the Northwest Territories. There's a lot happening on this front. Right now they are working on a continuous improvement initiative which is meant to help manage their project management -- or to improve rather the project management. So, and coming from that one of the things is to look at the Inuvik project and do a bit of a lessons learned, do a bit of a post review of what went wrong and what could be done better. A lot of things went right. It...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there was a number of challenges that arose in 2019 or post 2019 where budgets and projects that were in the past Assembly -- actually two Assemblies ago now, then run up against COVID. There was a number of delays and as really I think everyone out there, whether it's government procurement or private procurement, saw increases in the huge numbers in terms of what kinds of impacts fuel had, inflation had, interest rates had, labour market challenges had, and the government is no stranger to that. So what we saw across the private sphere certainly impacted...

That's definitely a little outside of my wheelhouse, Mr. Speaker. And I'm honestly just going off of a briefing I happen to have about where I was present with the Minister for housing. So I don't want to commit on her behalf. I know that she feels it's a priority. Again, brought that initiative forward to really help this Assembly to understand how things happen there. So I will commit to getting a number -- or to getting a date, and we'll make sure that that comes back to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to say it again. At this point, the conversation has only just begun. So we've put Ottawa on notice that we're going to be coming to them in order to make this request, that there's more information coming. Our offices here in the Department of Finance and Fiscal Policy are looking at what kind of options we are going to be looking at, what kinds of needs we might have, what is on the capital plan for the next several years, what is in in the operational plan for the next several years. Mr. Speaker, if the Member doesn't believe me when I answered...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Housing NWT does indeed, it's correct, take under -- undertake, rather, its own capital needs assessment process and that then -- and, frankly, starting from their own LHO. So each individual LHO is feeding up into the Housing NWT's system and then ultimately those reports are coming forward to financial management board when there's an ask put forward to support additional funding based on that work that was happening within the housing LHO to Housing NWT and then to determine what the needs might be. So it still is part of the total fiscal financial...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, about two years ago we began a very extensive process of having the fiscal responsibility policy reviewed. That process was undertaken with the Members of the House during the 19th Assembly, and part of what we did at that time was to review and to include an expressed threshold in our own policy after which point we would then be obligated to go to Ottawa. By doing that, it put an obligation on us. It was an obligation that all parties in this House, and anyone really within government would know, that once we hit the threshold of being within $120 million...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's a lot of conversations that happen in this House. There's a lot of communications that happen in this House. There are briefings that are done in a consensus government confidentially to Members and through caucus processes which we then don't speak about, really to protect everybody's ability to have those conversations. So I guess if I can look back and discuss with the Members through their -- what maybe was missed, what was maybe not heard, what was maybe not seen, to ensure that firstly the processes that we do have are effective, and that the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm very happy to say that all of our O and M contracts for the region are -- for the Dempster region are now in place, they're being operationalized. The ITH O and M contract is still being finalized. We spent a lot of effort on this one this summer and have certainly been approaching it, I think, from a view of some relationship building with contractors in the region. I do expect to have an update on that this week, and I'm looking forward to it being in place before the freeze up. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this House is responsible for the budget of the Government of the Northwest Territories. If there is -- I mean, this is a bit of a hypothetical, what kind of accountability there is. We have made a number of changes in my time in this role, both in this government and in the last, to improve the availability of information, to improve the transparency of the information, to provide increases in terms of the availability of the fiscal responsibility policy, its clarity. This was the first year, the first government ever, that we actually put the fiscal...