Julian Morse

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Okay, earlier I shared my constituent's experience getting lab work. Seconds after delivering that statement, the text messages started rolling in. Mr. Speaker, it's clear the new process is not working well for people. Can the Minister commit to reviewing this new process and bringing forward solutions which will improve access to this essential service? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I just want to speak to this one shortly. I think, you know, just when bringing motions forward, I think sometimes the desire to get ideas onto the floor gets ahead of the work needed to fully assess the problem, engage with those affected by it, and hear their needs, and work through the necessary and often difficult process of figuring out the most effective way to address those needs. I don't believe that responsibility lies solely on the shoulders of Cabinet. We do have tools at our disposal on the Regular side. We have our committees. We have an...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a friendly amendment to bring forward for this, which I'll speak to after reading the motion into the record.

I move, seconded by the Member for Great Slave, that Motion 35-20(1), Emergency Plan Support for Municipalities and Community Governments, be amended by replacing the word "direct" with the word "offer", adding "'s" to the word "organization", followed by adding the word "assistance", and adding "in need of assistance" after the words "Northwest Territories community" in the ninth paragraph of the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to highlight a recent report by Greenland's Economic Council on the current state of Greenland's economy and recommendations related to economic transition and sustainability. I want to highlight this report as it relates to ECE's business plan goal of developing an economic vision for the NWT. There are some interesting parallels with what is highlighted in the Greenland report in our own economic situation.

The first aspect of the report I want to draw attention to is related to how the government can best strengthen productivity in the...

I was just saying we're going to direct the emergency organization to do these plans on behalf of. It'll simply give communities the option. I think we need to be careful not to take autonomy away from our communities when we're passing motions such as this so that we ensure that our communities still hold their decision-making authority. So in the words -- I'll just quote the Mayor Alty of city of Yellowknife on this one.

As a policy principle, I don't want to regress into the time when the GNWT came in and did everything for communities and we didn't have a say. We are an order of government...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I certainly won't need 20 minutes to speak on this one. I am supportive of the -- similar to kind of some previous speakers, I'm supportive of the general intent of this motion though I don't think the details, implications, and a full understanding of how it can be successfully implemented have been thought out at this time. However, I would note that there are several models already being implemented in neighboring jurisdictions so we can learn from and borrow from their experience.

Mr. Speaker, the Yukon has a program like this. There's programs in...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, are we going to come back to page 379 at the end, is that the idea? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, so knowing that, I'll save that question for later.

But I just wanted to turn to the business plan. So there's a couple commitments in there. I think that they probably fall under the community housing services area. The first one is the completion of housing needs assessment. I've spoken to that a few times and, you know, I am supportive of housing doing that. I note that it's noted for March 31st, 2026. Is there a possibility that they could get that needs...

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. Last but not least, I would appreciate it it would be much easier for me to keep track of all this if the department was able to give us kind of a one or two sheet kind of just summary of this, all the information she just provided me, just so I can have it on hand if that's okay, in writing.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's an impressive amount of work, I must say. I don't know, I'm kind of left sitting here thinking, like wow, we should be telling people about this. This is really exciting stuff. Maybe you are and maybe it's just been falling on deaf ears, I'm not sure. So help me understand, then, so we're spending $107 million. Where does this $60 million of uncommitted funding come into that number?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Could I get a bit more detail on kind of what's planned for the builds for this year? Is the Minister able to share any details with us on what exactly they're planning to do with the money?