Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, so the Member is correct that this is the portion remaining for the Mackenzie Valley fibre line to take it all the way up to Tuktoyaktuk. But the next major phase of bringing all communities up to a standard of having available to them of 50/10 service standard, right now the CRTC which, somewhat uniquely in Canada, regulates the provider here in the Northwest Territories has set it up such that Northwestel, by virtue of that regulatory arrangement, is undertaking the work to bring all communities up to a service standard of 50/10. I believe that 2025 is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, construction contracts are monitored throughout. There are expectations to have monthly BIP content updates provided. They're monitored certainly by the departments responsible but procurement shared services does also share in that role. And I can say, Mr. Speaker, one of the changes that came about early in the process of the procurement review was to introduce vendor performance management, and that is something that's still fairly new but it has now been added into contracting provisions such that the contractor now knows that they will be subject to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I certainly like the idea of a tracking mechanism. There may be some challenges to determine the cutoff points. And what I mean by that is at what size of or scope of software or materials do we begin to put on the tracker versus not. But perhaps I'll just ask if Mr. Wind could just speak a bit to the nature of some of the assets that we do have, what is tracked; again, there's probably room to improve that. I appreciate the suggestion. As I say, I do certainly want to spend a bit more time on it but at least we can get a sense of what we do now. Again, I...

Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories has a responsibility to ensure benefits from the extraction of Northwest Territories natural resources are provided to residents of the Northwest Territories. The Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment has three initiatives that are advancing the priority set by the 19th Legislative Assembly to advance the benefit retention approach to economic development in the NWT. I would like to offer Members an update of this work.

This month, the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment launched a pilot program that will fund capacity...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think, Madam Chair, my understanding at this point is that we are in year one of a threeyear project and so the costs will begin to be incurred in the upcoming fiscal year. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So Madam Chair, I mean, it's the same answer in as much as the Member is saying it's the same question which is that, you know, other than I think the Yukon, other jurisdictions don't publish the costs because of the concern that everyone will just simply bid to the known budget rather than trying to put some effort in to minimize costs. So yes, I mean, and just to distinguish it's, you know, actual costs as they are incurred certainly are made available and those updates are made available. But it's the budget that is the issue because it's the budget that we don't...

Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document: Northwest Territories Carbon Tax Report 20212022. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So back in February, as the Member's mentioned, there was a request for an expression of interest issued. The point there being let's try to get a sense of what the costs would be. We knew they would likely to be high. But certainly it's good to have an update with some concrete numbers. There was only one respondent to the expression of interest, Northwestel. And then a letter was written to support them when they went out as part of the process they undertook, they went out under the Universal Broadband Fund to see what kind of funding opportunities there might be...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, earlier today I began to sort of go over some of the information that is available through the Government of Canada. They had put out maps that show cellular coverage across highways across all of Canada, back in 2018. So there may have been some improvements but certainly not dramatic ones, that there's over 1,200 kilometres of highways that have no cellular coverage; 115,000 kilometres of roads in Canada that have no cellular coverage which, you know, that's not a good news story by any way and by any means, but just to say that it's not a problem that...