Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at least two residents of Yellowknife South here. I'm not sure, I can't see who is behind me, so I hope I don't miss anyone. But happy to recognize Nicole Sock who is a resident of Yellowknife South here in the gallery today. And, also,.we have a page here from Yellowknife South, Quinian Boettger who is joining us and offering us much assistance. I promise to send extra notes today, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we had launched a few years ago the Indigenous Recruitment and Retention Framework of it and that had two key goals associated with it. The one is to increase Indigenous representation, full stop, in the public service. A number of goals and a number of actions therein, everything from creating and ensuring that there's employment opportunities, that there are no barriers, speaking with the Indigenous Employees Advisory Committee about what barriers they may observe, putting in Indigenous employment plans for every department. Different departments have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd be very happy to get that breakdown of information. The career development program -- or gateway program has been quite successful. It's now went from being undersubscribed to oversubscribed which is a problem we like to have. But I don't have the numbers in front of me. I will certainly get them to the Member quite quickly. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the work being done by our regional and divisional staff when it comes to supporting supply chain success in the territory. As you know, our resupply operations on the Mackenzie River faced significant challenges last season due to low water levels, disrupting the transportation of goods and fuel to communities in the Sahtu. The Government of the Northwest Territories, through the Department of Infrastructure's fuel services division, oversees the Petroleum Products Program, which manages the purchase, transport, and storage of fuel in 16 communities...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is the issue of residency that creates the risk that we would be concerned with respect to the mobility rights under the Constitution, so section 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms provide that all Canadian residents have mobility rights. And so it is specifically with respect to saying that persons who are living in the North or have lived in the North or have lived here for some period of time, that classification is the concern. But membership in a group that is historically disadvantaged, so this is where Indigenous Canadians and Indigenous...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the work between, I believe -- well, multiple departments and the auditor's general office of Canada went on for I want to say two years. It might have been slightly longer than that. That's fairly extensive, and I'd be happy to perhaps provide that by way of a written response. I won't do it justice here. The Department of Finance and the Office of the Comptroller General works with the Auditor General's Office of Canada on an annual basis. They prepare all of the audits for our government. And so, again, I think there was two parts to the question, and I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, Mr. Speaker, I do think that's an important point for folks to understand that there was the remediation of the space, first of all, and there's an industry term for it that's escaping me, but essentially to have it into a shell position so that it could actually be then renovated. So that's where there's two parts to what's going on. And the -- the vanilla shell, I think is the term. To have it at a vanilla shell so that it could be turned into a useful space. Again, that's not an insignificant cost and that has now been parsed out over the course of the lease...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't have that specific information. I'd be happy to get that for the Member and provide it to the House. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, when the decision was made to lease it out and to have it remediated by that leaseholder, the intention was that the leaseholder could make whatever choices initially that they wanted about what they would do with that building. Likely office space, commercial, commercial space, but not bound necessarily to turn it back into any kind of health facility. That would, of course, require the health department to be planning to go back in there and initially that was not the plan. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this, again -- more than happy to say if we want to admit wrongdoing, that looking back ten years ago we don't have all of the records that we should have in order to explain that decision. None of us were here. I wasn't here.

What I can say, Mr. Speaker, to the best of the knowledge today, at the time in 2014, the plan that health and social services was to build a new and standalone long-term care facility, and then when that project would have been ready to move forward closer, if I recall correctly, to the 2019, 2020 -- or rather 2020, the situation had...