Julian Morse

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And the Premier started to touch on the answer to this question already, but he noted that the GNWT has already taken some action. Can the Premier detail for the House what has been done to date in response to this report or to the 2023 wildfires and lessons learned? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, does the Premier agree that rebuilding trust needs to be a key goal of the government response to the after-action review on the wildfire season in 2023? And, Mr. Speaker, what does he feel is needed to achieve that goal? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at my recent constituency meeting, I had a good discussion with Frame Lake residents about their reaction to the after-action review of the 2023 wildfire season. One of the key concerns we discussed was the lack of trust and confidence in GNWT communications during the event, and I do want to take a second to acknowledge that the report made a point of noting that NWT Fires' regular updates were received positively.

My constituents were clear, Mr. Speaker, that it is important to them that the government rebuild trust with residents, as it's crucial that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just very quickly, why did so many of these projects have to carryover? It just striked me as a large number of projects as opposed to -- I mean, it's a fair amount of money, but just so many of them and so many across the territory, why so many? Does the department simply not have the capacity to complete the number of projects it's budgeting for, or what's going on? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, some of these reforms to the way that we're managing contracts, have we considered -- or maybe we already do -- consider looking at previous performance on contracts when awarding subsequent contracts. So if a vendor has gone over budget frequently or if the vendor has gone over budget previously, does that affect their point rating in terms of their being awarded contracts in the future? So what I'm looking for is can we demand accountability not just from ourselves but also from contractors as they bid on contracts.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's it for questions for me, and I'll just kind of reiterate that I'd like to see, you know, the department of MACA working to -- and Cabinet certainly working to stabilize this fund over time so that we're not stuck coming for supplementary estimates. And I think, you know, we need to figure out how to fund sport to ensure that, yeah, activity is going on in communities. I think a lot of the community programming is really important, and I just want to emphasize that. So I'll leave my comments at that for now. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And so I understand the need for a one-time contribution, but I guess I'd be interested to hear the Minister discuss whether there's been discussion about what can be done in the long term to stabilize this fund because I'm guessing we don't see it as a tenable situation to just simply be providing supplementary funding every single time we need to fund games. I mean, the idea was the lotteries revolving fund was supposed to sustain itself. It seems like we're not in that situation anymore, so I'm curious to hear what we're doing to resolve that problem. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I have a few questions about the contribution to physical activities, sport and recreation fund. Just to be clear, what is this funding proposed to cover, the $1.8 million?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate following up after the Member from Monfwi because I couldn't have said it better myself. I really appreciated her comments, and certainly quite a lot was said about this motion already, and so I don't want to add too much to it; I appreciated the Minister's response.

Mr. Speaker, there's a few aspects of this motion that I'm more comfortable with than others but would say that much of this has been called for already by MLAs, the NWT Medical Association, nurses, and other healthcare practitioners, and this motion is kind of -- I don't even know...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I note that the report contains some short-term recommendations but also some very long-term recommendations as far as four years into the future. Mr. Speaker, how will the government ensure these recommendations are followed up on and not forgotten? Thank you.