Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the line of questions. This is yet one more of the suite of things that we are trying to address and trying to implement across the human resources processes within the GNWT. We have, as a part of responding to this, now implemented the national standard for psychological health and safety in the workplace across the GNWT. So it creates a very specific target by which staff can understand what their rights are and what the processes are and whereby supervisors and managers can have some toolkits available to them.

With respect to that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, when this first went out a year ago, or about 2023, rather, for rounds of consultation, the proposal was to do an approach where we would have First Nations, Inuit, Metis persons or members or descendants from groups within the Northwest Territories' boundaries as a first priority and all Indigenous Canadians second priority. As I said, there are a number of people within the Northwest Territories, Indigenous, who -- part of that process and said, look, this doesn't capture me, please, can it be more inclusive. Again, there's no policy that's going to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we're not looking to take away benefits from Northerners. Firstly, the definition under the affirmative action policy isn't always what people think it is. You can be born in the Northwest Territories and move to anywhere else in Canada. You are still going to be benefitting as a P1. So it's not necessarily as simple as all that. And, yet, that reality has been on the books for 35 years. So there's lots of folks who come up to the North, who live in the North who are not P1s. In fact, they have no category or status whatsoever. There's folks who may live...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the work of committee. I was relatively agnostic towards most of the recommendations and quite happy to just accept them and to -- yes, again, I'm not on the committee. It's a lot of work to go through these things. I'm glad they've done it, and I appreciate the recommendations. This one, obviously, has come up now, and there's been a lot of discussion. I have had a lot of opportunity over the last five years to sit in the witness chair during Committee of the Whole between different departments, particularly the Finance. It is actually a great...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have on many an occasion provided this House, both this government and the last, with my own frustrations with this carbon tax and the bit of stink I've raised with the federal Ministers responsible for putting us in the situation we are in.

Mr. Speaker, certainly, again, happy to go and look at it and if there's a way that I can appropriately and responsibly get ourselves out from underneath this tax, that's fine. It's not really a time where I necessarily want to try to stick it to the federal government or make something difficult or suggest that we're...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, until there's a change in the federal legislation, we are still obligated to comply with some form of carbon taxation and so, again, pending what may or may not be happening on a federal level or when, then we will certainly want to make sure that we're ready, and it's very helpful and handy to have something at the ready when that day comes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's -- obviously, there's staff across the departments that are involved in this work but, quite specifically, there actually are individuals from the education councils who are involved, as I said, on this committee that's supposed to start moving some of these actions forward and supposed to be monitoring the success of them. The education councils are somewhat separate certainly from what may be happening in ECE, and so it was important to have them included and involved. The problems and challenges they may have could be quite different and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is a particular one that I read several of the individual EESSs for individual departments as well as for the GNWT as a whole, and there's often an interesting correlation between when information is not flowing and then what that can do to the overall morale in an individual place. So this is one of some particular interest to me, so -- and, again, on this one, Mr. Speaker, this is where each department, because there are often different processes and different types of hierarchies within them are expected to have those individualized plans. Again, I...

Mr. Speaker, I'm going to take a look at Hansard and decide whether or not a comparison between myself and Mr. Trump warrants some further proceeding -- procedural question. I'm going to leave it alone for the moment and I can, as I said, look back at Hansard and make that consideration in due course.

Mr. Speaker, I certainly did attempt to take this back to committee. I actually was able to arrange an opportunity to meet with committee, but the committee declined to meet with me. And then because of all the things had gone to the media, including confidential letters marked from my office to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's not been a time that I've suggested that what we're trying to do is encouraging the southern -- host of folks from the southern parts of Canada to come to the Northwest Territories. I'd be actually quite interested to see if there was suddenly a line-up at the border of folks wanting to come for the public service here. It might be suggestive of this being a very positive place to come and work. Mr. Speaker, our population's been stagnant for 20 years. Right now over the last four years, the average population growth for the Northwest Territories is...