Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm very happy to say that all of our O and M contracts for the region are -- for the Dempster region are now in place, they're being operationalized. The ITH O and M contract is still being finalized. We spent a lot of effort on this one this summer and have certainly been approaching it, I think, from a view of some relationship building with contractors in the region. I do expect to have an update on that this week, and I'm looking forward to it being in place before the freeze up. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this House is responsible for the budget of the Government of the Northwest Territories. If there is -- I mean, this is a bit of a hypothetical, what kind of accountability there is. We have made a number of changes in my time in this role, both in this government and in the last, to improve the availability of information, to improve the transparency of the information, to provide increases in terms of the availability of the fiscal responsibility policy, its clarity. This was the first year, the first government ever, that we actually put the fiscal...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm more than happy to do that in part because although this is a summarized process, the priorities of the government are, as I said earlier, always part of every decision paper that comes before Cabinet or the financial management board, and they govern the work of every Minister through a mandate letter. So in ensuring that we're reflecting that both to the public as well as in our summary documents, it's critical. And if that's not coming through in terms of understanding where those opportunities are for the priorities to be reflected, then we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the priorities of the Assembly are priorities of the Ministers that stand here just as much as of MLAs. When matters come through our individual departments, that is I know certainly reflected in our mandate letter. I can speak for myself, Mr. Speaker, that it's reflected in the mandate letter that I have for my departments, and mandate letters very much govern what comes forth in departments as they're trying to ensure that they achieve what's in these mandate letters which are themselves a product that comes from other priorities and then, of course...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, again, appreciate that feedback as well. That work in fact is underway. I'd like to -- very happy to commit to get an update to this House, to the public, as to where we're at on that. The expectation I have is that there will be perhaps two deputy ministers who remain given that this is Crown corporation that does rely significantly on public dollars to help stabilize our power rates but otherwise looking to get professionals into that space who understand the energy space, who understand the complexities of the energy space, and who are in a position...

Slash Finance. It is a pickle, Mr. Speaker, thank you. So first of all, Mr. Speaker, the challenges that are being faced in the Northwest Territories Power Corporation that are certainly impacting the Department of Finance are not exclusively related to cost overages relating to different projects. There's a significant amount of impact from low water which is a situation entirely outside of my control or really that of anyone else in this House. We have been in a situation where the Snare plant has been burning a significant amount of diesel and in a situation where during -- because of the...

No, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, Mr. Speaker, we have certainly made efforts with fiscal responsibility here to try to make changes within our main estimates. Obviously, the main estimates come to the floor of this House, and we see how the changes to the main estimates go in the last government, and we were -- or when we last -- Assembly -- or last session, we were certainly asked to roll back some of the changes that we were proposing at that time. But it's a conversation for this House generally when the main estimates come forward, what else we can do to adjust them if that's the situation we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I happen to know that Housing NWT is actually putting together some information about their capital process and how they do their ranking and how they do their assessments because that then does feed into what we do at the financial management board and the Department of Finance and our processes. So, for example, when there's an increase on utilities costs, that's a forced growth matter that comes to the financial management board from Housing NWT, and it goes through the same forced growth process as everywhere else. And in that sense, they are in fact...

Mr. Speaker. At this point in time, we've simply put Ottawa on notice that we're going to need to have a conversation with them, that there's a lot more information that will have to go into that, a lot more planning, including, quite frankly, happy to have that conversation with Members of this House. It's not a unilateral decision. We are triggered by the fiscal responsibility policy. We've undertaken that effort to begin that conversation, but the process is not one that happens overnight. Thank you.