Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there are a great many struggles across this Northwest Territories right now, whether it's the public service that's struggling, whether it's NGOs delivering services that are struggling, whether it's residents who are struggling, residents in the Sahtu right now are struggling. So it is difficult to have a line item or an announceable in a budget that addresses every single one of the struggles that we are having in the territory right now coming off of four years of struggle. There's a lot of struggle. No, there is not a line item that says, this NGO...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, going to bat to ensure that multi-year funding agreements are available is certainly something that I've already fought for and that is now quite widely available, and we'll certainly be dulling that down, that message, as I know my deputy minister already has with his colleagues at my request, that multi-year funding agreements are available. They've been available for the government for a long time. They come with the caveat that we only approve budgets here once a year. That applies to every department and everything we do, including the contribution...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have some good news to report in a broad sense. The project for the Taltson watershed area and the potential expansion of the Taltson is proceeding under an MOU. And it's an MOU that involves the Akaitcho First Nations as well as Metis governments of the region and of the Taltson watershed. And we've had more than one steering committee already in the time of this government. One, in fact, in person, where the group travelled to see what underwater tables would look like along with members of the steering committee as well as members of their council. I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly happy to do that. As I've said, I understand they've looked at having a retail end point. Our perspective has been to put at the markup, which is really the end that we control. So to ensure that we all move forward on a policy that makes sense to everyone, if we're going to do this review, I'd be happy to meet with them and make sure that we're all speaking the same language. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is a policy in place from the financial management board that supports having our local producers receive a discount on the markup. So the Northwest Territories Liquor and Cannabis Commission places a markup on all cannabis products that come for sale in the North. For our cannabis producers here locally, any cannabis producers here locally, they get a 10 percentage point discount, which equates in real numbers to being almost a 30 percent discount on that markup. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So Madam Chair, that sounds to me like that is likely in relation to Mackenzie Valley Highway or one of the associated projects, Great Bear River Bridge for instance. So if that is the case, then that would not be reflected in certainly not in this particular instance. Or on this particular page, sorry. It would yeah, it would come in under the capital planning process for any any of the large-scale funding for large scale capital projects will be in there. The smaller scale programs that are here aren't subject to the same sort of carryover process. They typically...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I believe that is correct, that ECE is the only other department that has formal evaluators. I may be in error, but. So what we are doing with respect to GRI is in you know, where needed in order to maintain the schedule and the timeline that we have is relying on contract dollars and having support from outside in addition to the internal staff that we've already mentioned. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If we want to have a discussion, that means questions back and forth. So, well, if we're going to do that, Mr. Speaker, right now, I think it's also well-known we have, really, three large diamond mines that provide all of the royalties in the Northwest Territories, one of which is on the verge of closure; the other two are staying open for now but it's been pretty clear, and said many times here, that that shelf life is coming due fairly quickly. So in terms of what we do with that resource income, firstly, it's not perhaps as big as I would like it to be. But...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So Madam Chair, let me just say, first of all, that the loss of the low carbon economy energy fund was a significant amount of money. It was significantly more than just what is shown here. I'm inclined to put it at yes, so it's closer to $5 million in total that we're losing. And I say that in that when we have had a loss of funding in that magnitude and there's some a program dollar that can be accessed through the federal government, yes, I am going to point people to go to the pot that exists elsewhere rather than take from the pot that has now been reduced by $5...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, given the uptake to date on EV vehicles, we do believe that we are in a position to have sufficient amount of charging stations. So there's charging stations in and I'll double check the year here; I'm sure someone's going to send it to me as I say this. But there will be sufficient charging stations to create a corridor from here to the border. And so, again, in terms of ruling out that by in 2024, a fiscal year of 2024. So with that, that provides that ability for hopefully more people to then begin to buy the vehicles, EV vehicles, since that does...