Daniel McNeely

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the Minister for that explanation and understanding these cuts. I know it's a hard decision to dismiss people, having done that myself. But on the flip side here, it seems that the inmate capacity is sitting at 44 percent, which is good news. So it tells me that the incarceration rate or the occupancy is down. So therefore, is there plans to reduce the staff of that administration to house -- or the administration, the government employees, to reduce because of the reduction of the inmate capacity at 44 percent? Do we need all the employees still working? Thank...

Fine supplementary. Thanks very much there, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad to hear we got a timeline, now we can expect our efficiency of land administration to be concluded. That's more of a statement. I look forward to working -- or will the Minister update us after the spring of 2024 is done? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for that reply. My next question, as I said in my Member's statement, the Public Lands Act passed in this House in August 2019 yet its implementation has been delayed because the regulations have not been developed. Can the Minister explain why the development and regulations for the Public Lands Act has taken so long? Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. And thanks for that encouraging reply by the Minister.

On my last trip, which was a one-way from Norman Wells to Yellowknife, it cost the government $1,800. And there's many cases where medical travel patients are coming here only to find out the appointment wasn't booked but it was booked for a month later, or other cases where people actually told me their experience. So that's why I say it's costing the government because of some mistake that was made and it seems to be quite common for medical travel patients to come to their appointment when, in fact, it was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Public Lands Act Regulations. Today, Mr. Speaker, I want to speak about the status on implementation of Public Lands Act.

Mr. Speaker, the work on the development of the Public Lands Act began in 2017 during the 18th Assembly by the former Department of Lands. The Act was later introduced and eventually passed at the end of the 18th Assembly in August of 2019. Based on this, a person would probably think the Public Lands Act has been in force for about five years now; however, Mr. Speaker, this is not the case.

According to the text of the Act, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's all I had at this point in time. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm glad to see that the -- there's an increase of 6 percent. Hopefully it's going into the right programs, being as efficient as it could be. And when we hear a lot of the news on lack of nurses, so we got to rely on agency nurses, and we hear the ongoing delivery problems with medical travel, pre-assessments, so when I hear that and I look at the business plan and the supported financial documents to that plan and I look at the list of programs and -- or health and social programs that this department's offering and services and so on, so taking a real wholistic...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm glad to see that this department is taking an active role as identified in the business plan to address our drug trade issues. And I'm also glad that some other responsibilities are with the Minister and the Premier so when they're making trips to Ottawa to solicit for more money, I think we can all -- we can encourage our leader to emphasize the need for additional policing resources. And then when we get to the -- when we get to the fact of homelessness, now we've got the Minister and the Premier responsible for that department also or that initiative. So it works...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I kind of view this OROGO office as a continued allied services to the industry community. And I'm going to say this is probably a real good rate of return on this expense there, Mr. Chair, because our revenues or the royalties received by this industry, I think it's -- I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it's into the millions. So if you're spending $1.2 million, and you're getting back royalties in the neighbourhood of two or three or four, wouldn't you think that would be a good expense on regulatory responsibilities with this area? There's much that this...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It seems, you know, from past experiences there, we -- where there's a lost opportunity, another one's created. So we have an emerging willingness for rehabilitation. So there's going to be staff opportunities for the emerging counselling for drugs, as we discussed here the last number of days, more specifically yesterday, on the increased activity of the drug trade. So to minimize that demand through counsellors and those types of positions would the 30 position PY, in this case, you got 17 -- 15 and 17 PYs here. Is there some -- I don't know, maybe some of the staff...