Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I mean, one of the major first steps of course of having that workshop, bringing folks together, and now developing and working through the creation of a form of an action plan with public engagement throughout that process. It's certainly been my practice to ask that we continue to go back out to public, to stakeholders, to interested parties throughout many and most if not most or all of the files I'm certainly responsible for. This will be no different.

When we're doing that, that's the time to be asking what analyses are necessary, what steps can be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, Mr. Speaker, this  whether it's a 'what we heard' or a workshop report, I sometimes don't like to get stuck in the semantics. We're going to have a report of the workshop. We're going to get it out to the public. It's going to outline some of the ideas that we heard from NRCan, Canada, the Government of Alberta, CanNor, the Tlicho government, Det’on Cho, the University of Alberta, Lakehead University, so very much looking forward to getting that out. And, yeah, most certainly. Again, whatever type of title we give this report, that's meant to be a guide so we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the COVID money that was received from the federal government wasn't necessarily allocated for employees or staffing or specific to, you know, hazard pay or anything of the sort. There was a number of different very specific pots that we received funding under. I mean, this is what helped pay for our waste water sampling program. This is what helped pay for isolation centre costs. And we've certainly reported on those costs throughout the course of the pandemic. I will commit to getting another update to the House on where the costs have been incurred and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I sincerely hope that any public servant right now who is tired and exhausted and stressed is not going to stop taking the leave that they need to take. The fact that we're in a crisis right now in terms of the numbers of staffing at Stanton Hospital is not the fault of the staff and I do want them to continue to take their leave. They need to take their leave. The crisis we're in started long before this month and long before last month and, frankly, probably as a result of the fact that people are burnt out and they do need their time. So this is not the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can do better than a 'yes', I can say that we've already done that. So, and I'm happy to continue those meetings, Mr. Speaker. I'm not totally surprised at the announcement that came yesterday. We don't necessarily always know but I certainly had a sense that that might be a direction that these parties might be going. I was thrilled to see it. I think that's a good move for the Northwest Territories. I am excited to see what will come with it and always happy to know if there's an opportunity for the government to participate in projects such as this one...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, and, yes, we are making efforts to do, frankly, a better job through the year of adjusting budgeting on projects so that there doesn't have to be a significant of an adjustment or a significant appropriation later in the budgeting cycle. And so the idea being that as the year progresses and as this particular capital plan progresses, we will be keeping an eye on it so that when projects do see changes, as any large scale projects will, that we can bring that to the attention of the House earlier, and it -- that's been foreshadowing that there is one of...

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's I mean we're having the money on hand, yeah, it it's amortization again, and amortization is something that's always reflected in the budget.

I'm going to turn this one over to the deputy minister and see if he wants to speak to that intersection between the planning and the reflection of what's in the budget, please.

Madam Chair, I would suggest that go to the deputy minister, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So this money doesn't include the collection stations. I can give a little bit of an update. There's been a fair bit happening on this. I'm only just starting to assimilate the information myself.

But the collection stations, certainly we are required to work with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, so the federal government is going to be critical in terms of the collection stations work that's going on.

There is money in the budget ultimately to support this work, but the first thing that we need is to identify a site.

So under Fisheries and Oceans, small craft...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, there always are certain amount of carryovers that do accrue but I'd suggest in the hopes of having an exact number, if available, that we direct that to the department, to Mr. Bill MacKay and perhaps thereafter Mr. Courtoreille. Thanks.