Caitlin Cleveland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I love this idea because it also allows people to share ideas. It also might mean partnerships even within the business community when people start sharing their ideas and what they're looking at doing. So I commit to taking this back to both ECE and ITI and seeing what can be done from our regional offices in order to support this and make sure people have access, one, to the information, but two, exploring how they can potentially bring different opportunities together. Thank you.

Thank you very much. So, Mr. Speaker, all of the entities that I've mentioned are ways that I am looking to work together to have that funded. We would also need to make sure that we're doing this work in concert, not just with IRC but also working with the significant license holders of that region of which there are five. And so continuing those conversations to pursue that feasibility study is what I am trying to get done here. That is the next step that we need to tackle to make this idea, this opportunity, a reality. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member also spoke about hope, and I share the same hope that he spoke about in his Member's statement and that desire to see strong economic engines for the Northwest Territories. I have a meeting with the new chair of the IRC this month. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I want to talk about opportunity - opportunity that strengthens communities, creates pathways to employment and entrepreneurship, and positions Northerners to capitalize on the heightened national and international interest in the North. As the Minister of Finance said in yesterday's budget address, a strong Northwest Territories builds a stronger Canada, and that strength begins with our people and the opportunities before them.

Across the Northwest Territories, people are looking for practical ways to build their careers, grow their skills, or start...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's definitely questions being posed in looking for solutions as part of the potential lifting of the moratorium. One of the concerns that we have certainly heard is ensuring that fairness to exploration license holders is maintained and addressed in this process. There are a number of licenses that would be set to expire potentially right up against when the moratorium could be lifted. And so it would be essential to ensure that a solution is figured out before that happens. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the Minister for Strategic Infrastructure, Energy, and Supply Chains, sits on a steering committee for the Mackenzie Valley Highway, and making sure that people are ready for this project is part of their conversations. I also understand that this month, the committee -- or sorry, the Minister's Department for Strategic Infrastructure, Energy, and Supply Chains will be doing their engagement plan to start working with Indigenous governments on what that readiness will look like, and so I can confirm to the Member that this work is...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is almost right. It was raised to $87,000, was the highest in zone 3. Zone 2 is $75,000. Zone 1 is $66,000 a year of annual income. And I'm more than happy to work with education, culture and employment to provide the substantiation for those amounts to the Member so that we can kind of work with together to see what that was based on and provide that information to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, as I said, we just increased the income threshold and so we use the updated heating costs data for the Northwest Territories and made sure that we were doing that regionally so it was reflected because we know that the cost of heat here in Yellowknife is much different, for example, than Ulukhaktok. We also use the living cost differential and as well the proportion of income typically spent on fuel in homes.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, for the subsidy rate itself, we were able to use updated fuel consumption data, fuel price information. And...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. So our first step is to finalize our economic vision and have this strategy really feed into that and ensure that what we're doing beyond that aligns. It's important to note that our investment strategy isn't just focused, for example, on minerals, it isn't just focused on tourism. It really is an all-of-government approach, and it's really important that we consider things like housing investment, that we consider things like DND, that we consider our health. Our health sector is also an economic sector. And so it really requires an all-of-government approach...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document: Additional Information for Follow-up to Oral Question 839-20(1), Emergency Back-up Generators in School. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.