Caroline Wawzonek

Mr. Speaker, today I want to describe how key infrastructure projects are helping support our government's commitment to building strong relationships with Indigenous governments.

A key example of this collaboration is the Taltson Hydro Expansion. This project is being advanced though a memorandum of understanding agreement between the Government of the Northwest Territories and Indigenous governments with traditional territory in the Taltson watershed; namely, the Northwest Territory Metis Nation, the Akaitcho Dene First Nations, and Salt River First Nation.

Regular meetings at the leadership...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's not that the department doesn't have legal opinions over the last 35 years; however, I just won't be putting forward legal opinions that are subject to solicitor-client privilege here on the floor of the House. Mr. Speaker, certainly happy to sit down and engage further about the various risks that go into determining policy. I'm not going to speak to what Quebec may or may not do. And there is a significant difference in the application of, you know -- if where this was going was some suggestion around, you know, what kind of risk mitigation strategies one might...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, under the summer student program you do need to be ordinarily resident so that right now persons who, as P2, would be born in the Northwest Territories. If they are not an ordinarily resident, then they would not. If they are a P2 because they have lived more than half their life and might be a student from that -- in that respect and if they're now still ordinarily resident, then they would qualify, Mr. Speaker. If under the Indigenous employment policy, you would have -- of course, again, it's related to persons who are Indigenous to the Northwest...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we do take the safety of highways quite seriously. There's regular inspections of all the highways. To what extent there are inspections versus specific studies or studies related to private projects, I'm happy to look into it. Mr. Speaker, it may well be that the project proponents themselves have done some examinations. I know, for example, over in another -- in your own region, Mr. Speaker, the Norzinc mine certainly was looking at what impacts having extra highway traffic would bring to those, to the highways in that area. So happy to look into it and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that's an excellent observation by a member of the public. And it's a direction that we may well see ourselves moving towards in terms of being able to communicate better of what our successes and our challenges are in the space of being representative. We know that the Northwest Territories has a 50 percent Indigenous population, but it's quite right that the actual labour force is not necessarily a 50/50 split. And that may be owing to the age demographics, if people are too young or too old to be in the workforce for example. What we do find is that in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that's a very fair question. We, in fact, do build -- that estimate I was given of sort of 7, $8 million, based on the cost of the Tlicho region winter roads; a significant difference being in the Tlicho region, the winter roads are over ice crossings whereas to Lutselk'e, we are looking at crossing Great Slave Lake, which is obviously a huge body of water, behaves extremely differently. There's significant winds, significant movement on a very deep lake. Pressure ridges develop. There's high risks of having open water at any given moment. Significant...

Mr. Speaker, to complete this week, recognizing some of the achievements from Yellowknife South constituents, I am including today Dr. Ryan Connon who received the Government of Canada Emergency Management Exemplary Service Award in February. Dr. Connon is part of a three-person team, including Dr. Anna Coles and Shawne Kokelj, who, since 2020, have made up the Department of Environment and Climate Change's hydrology team. They work diligently to provide situational updates on river breakup and open water flood risks to the GNWT and to affected communities and residents.

Mr. Speaker, their work...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, it really certainly does fulfill both. Certainly the drive and putting that much money into it is an economic driver but it also supports local artists, and it's an incredible mentorship opportunity. I had the great joy of going recently out on to one of these film sets and was absolutely tickled to see that there was multiple staff members who are grown up in the territory who had come back to mentor other people within the industry who were working on the film set as well. And so it was really neat to have this cohort of Northerners kind of come...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, Mr. Speaker, with respect to a concern on high cost of living and looking for solutions, one of those areas where there's high costs is the fact that there's a lot of fuel that has to get transported to the community and a lot of that is being transported because the community right now of Lutselk'e is running on a diesel generator to generate all of their power. And yet, Mr. Speaker, I do believe there have been some initial scoping studies done about micro hydro facilities. That would reduce the cost of living potentially, certainly bring a more reliable...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is, of course, some significant critical minerals deposits not far from Lutselk'e in terms of rare earth elements, and it certainly is, of course, work that's -- we're hoping will be getting underway on a Taltson expansion which would have a cable running under the water but would certainly involve potentially some, you know, work being done in or near Lutselk'e and potentially ending up having to move some equipment. That doesn't necessarily open up having consistent year over year winter road. It simply means that there may be some years where even...