Julian Morse

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. I think, yeah, I mean, if I could communicate back what I am feeling when I review our business plan and particularly ITI's consideration of risk, I mean, I think that risks to the NWT economy have increased significantly in the past few years, or at least become more acute, and some significant changes occurred that were unexpected. I agree with the Minister's point that, you know, we knew that the diamond mine closures were coming. I've made lots of statements about that, and I think lots of Members have noted it. However, there have been some changes to diamond...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I want to ask some business planning questions that aren't 100 percent clear exactly where they land in the budget. So the first one I wanted to ask -- or first series, I guess -- are just the risks and mitigations activities page.

Over the last two business planning cycles, ITI has noted that no changes were required to its risk profile or mitigations. Maybe I am misunderstanding what that page is for. But does ITI have internal triggers or external indicators that they use to decide when a risk or mitigation must be updated? Are those triggers documented and time...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate again the response from the Minister. And I am wondering if maybe something like the ISD team could be established in health considering how complex some of the files are that health system clients have. So if the Premier wants to consider a new team or an expansion of the team, it's certainly something I would support. So I would appreciate hearing from the Premier on that as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, first question around that. So, I assume that the new director position is going to be indeterminate. The new communications position, is that a term position or indeterminate? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was giving them the option of deciding who wanted to -- because it's kind of cross-departmental. I will say the health Minister for now but if the Premier wants to answer, I'd be happy as well. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. And we talked a fair bit about workforce on the previous pages and in the business plan with relation to boosting northern employment numbers. But, yeah, I am wondering about knowledge economy development from a couple of different perspectives. One is the risk identified in our economic and fiscal outlook that we have workforce availability issues, and we have issues with the level of education and preparedness in our workforce. And so that's a risk and a gap that I think we should be trying to close in terms of economic planning.

The point that I wanted to highlight from that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I consider this health sustainability unit more of a fiscal responsibility exercise. I mean, the department has had a number of years with that review and the recommendations from it. Mr. Speaker, would the Minister consider establishing a systemic support role similar to the integrated service delivery team at EIA for persons with disabilities and supported living clients or working with the Premier to see if such a role could be added to the ISD team that exists? Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate the Minister being brief most of the time, but in this case if she could elaborate a bit on what the review is looking to achieve and change, that would be great.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, following up on my statement earlier today, does the department of health -- and these questions are for the health Minister. Does the department of health have a system navigation or cross-departmental service access function which could receive clients with disabilities or their families and help coordinate access to services across programs and departments for them? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No. The Minister shared a lot of information there. I think the -- I think I guess if I could just get some comments in on this, what I would say is that I recognize that the problems we're trying to solve here are complex, and it's not easy to just answer on the fly and on the floor, and I don't expect necessarily answers on the fly and on the floor to these kinds of questions. But my point is that I want the department -- because I can't see where else this could land. It could be ECE. It could be ITI. But we need to be thinking about how to deal with this workforce...