Shane Thompson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to talk about the Fort Simpson Speed Skating Club.

Mr. Speaker, the Fort Simpson Speed Skating Club is a strongminded youth who have been working hard over the last two years to keep attending practices and competitions despite all the COVID19 related closures.

This year the team traveled to Yellowknife for the NWT championships in February, and the whole team's mental and physical strength was tested. Every individual brought home huge personal best times and increased selfconfidence. Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to watch these...

In favour.

In favour.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to try to be as succinct as possible here. First of all, I represent five small communities and one regional centre. So when I'm sitting on Cabinet, I'm listening to my colleagues talk, the departments talk, and I'm also sitting on a variety of committees of Cabinet. So we may not get the the information that the regular Members get on their committees, but I can guarantee you the opportunity to sit in and have the conversations about budgets and the process at the table I know myself, and I can't speak for Minister Chinna, but I should just say that I've...

In favour.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, like I said previously, we've given $9 million to communities with some real good flexibility to it. They have the ability to use that money as they see fit where they need to address their pandemic issues.

Moving forward, we understand that, you know, COVID's going to be a part of the process and we are encouraging municipal governments to start budgeting accordingly. But we're more than willing to sit down and work with them with their budgeting process as we move forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To date, we have not received any requests for additional funding for cultural, sport, or recreational events above and beyond the existing funding pots that we provide right now. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In favour.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, for that detail, I would have asked the Member to give the question to me earlier, but I can try to explain it the best we can. So we do have and I believe there was a technical briefing provided by the Wek’eezhii Water and Resources Board with our staff. It committee, which was made public.

So we do have airlines or we charter aircrafts that we survey it. There's a longitudes and latitude checked. They check on the the the herd, the calves, and the cows and that in the Bathurst area. And that's how it's corrected or calculated.

So there is a map, and...

Hopefully I get the I got the message here. So to be clear, there has been no reduction in the survey. What happened in 2020, we had money in the budget to do the survey for the caribou, and then COVID hit. So then we've been playing catch up. The money that was here that we had in the budget for this year is going into the next years' budgets. We do the survey every two years. So we do the research. We work we bring in some of our Indigenous partners to go travelling with us as part of our survey group. So we do the survey.

The money was spent last year. The results are in this year. And so...