Deputy Premier Minister of Finance Minister Responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation Minister Responsible for Strategic Infrastructure, Energy and Supply Chains
Caroline Wawzonek was first elected to the 19th Legislative Assembly in 2019 as the Member for Yellowknife South. Ms. Wawzonek served as Minister of Justice, Minister of Finance, Minister responsible for the Status of Women and the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. In 2023, Ms. Wawzonek was acclaimed to the 20th Legislative Assembly and returned to Executive Council as Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance, Minister of Infrastructure and the Minister Responsible for the NWT Power Corporation.
Ms. Wawzonek holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Calgary (2000) and a law degree from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (2005). Her academic journey included language studies in China and Taiwan, as well as legal internships in the Philippines and England. Born in Calgary, AB, she has called Yellowknife home since 2007.
After establishing her criminal law practice post-admission to the Law Society of the NWT, Ms. Wawzonek appeared in all levels of NWT courts and engaged in circuit court travel. She later joined Dragon Toner, expanding her practice to general litigation and administrative law until becoming a member of the 19th Assembly.
Since 2007, she has taken on leadership roles in the legal community, including the presidency of the Law Society of the Northwest Territories (LSNT), section chair for the Canadian Bar Association Northwest Territories Branch (CBA-NT), and committee membership in various working groups. Her community involvement extends to appointments in multiple Yellowknife organizations, and she received a national award in 2017 for her contributions to Canadian Women in Law.
Ms. Wawzonek, a mother of two, enjoys running, paddleboarding, and time outdoors.
Either way, Mr. Speaker, on this one, thank you for the question. Mr. Speaker, this report from the auditor general, every single other recommendation the GNWT has accepted. It's singularly around the classification of the Liwego'ati Building as being whether a P3 or not a P3 that we continue to have this issue. If it is a commercial lease, we do not report any of our commercial leases publicly. They are proprietary information to the landlord. Because we have classified this one as a commercial lease, it is proprietary information, it is reported by constituency, by community, as every other...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't want to presuppose the work of the committee with respect to how the action plan is being formed and what it will contain or its detail. There is a lot of work happening across departments. We are all contributing to being part of the work on behalf of the GNWT as being just one Member at that table. So, Mr. Speaker, and I don't want to also -- to take away from the fact that the GNWT has bilateral agreements with multiple Indigenous governments and that we also sit at Council of Leaders and at IGCS. So there's a great deal of integration within the...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, I agree, an excellent question and appreciate it, Mr. Speaker, and there will be divergence of views on this. I recognize that. It is an area that when we did engagement over a year and some, 2023-2024, it's an area that I, frankly, found interesting to read and learn more about. There is, again, divergence of view on it. But one of the views that the Department of Finance has here ultimately adopted is that folks who may experience some form of disability don't want to have to self-disclose in order to be able to gain advantage, and so what we would...
Mr. Speaker, again, I am happy to be able to report as soon as we are paving that runway, we will be chip sealing this portion of the Inuvik Bypass Road. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, it strikes fear into my heart as a lawyer who is under obligations to hold records as well. So I can't answer for what may or may not have happened back in 2014 or 2015, Mr. Speaker. What I can answer for is the efforts that we're making today to make sure that we don't find ourselves back in this situation. Not only today but looking back even a few years now within this -- within more recent government, changes to the procurement process, changes to the records management. We have a procurement committee. It might seem like an extra layer, but to not have coordination amongst...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one of the most significant things that we get from that, having entered into the revenue, again, sharing agreement with them, it did bring down the overall cost to us of having access to a building that has been fully renovated for use. And when I say renovated, I also want to say remediated. Again, the costs of remediating a building of this size and scale are not insignificant. That would have been a significant cost to the GNWT to do that, to bring it up to a level that would then be actually useable again from the state that it was in. So we are --...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, so there's the P3 partner who operates the Stanton Territorial Hospital and then there is a separate arrangement, commercial arrangement, with a leaseholder over the Liwego'ati Building. Again, two different entities that we are speaking about. And what I certainly can look again back to, and I believe was committed at the time, is that some further evidence can be provided, some further information can be provided with respect to the cost differentials. So specifically on the Liwego'ati Building, at that time it would have been -- at the time that the...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the auditor general, as I understand, was -- is looking at the two projects as one and our view continues to be that the two projects are not one. And so the way that we are looking at that value analysis continues to differ, Mr. Speaker. And we do now have a campus-based approach with health care with the two facilities operating side-by-side rather than a Stanton Territorial Hospital and what would have then been a separate building built somewhere else at some distance. So at this point, Mr. Speaker, we have two operating facilities and, again, looking...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, to my knowledge this is a unique situation. It was also a unique opportunity, Mr. Speaker. It's not one that was -- any Member of this Cabinet was in government at the time. What we had is a building that we owned that needed to be remediated, and we needed to remediate it at significant costs. This is a large building, a medical building, and the remediation would be significant. So that was included as part of the leasing arrangement.
Subsequent to that -- and I think this is where there starts to be some challenges. And subsequent to that, it was...
