Julian Morse

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of ECC. Mr. Speaker, what is the status of the initiative to bulk transfer Commissioner's land within the municipal boundary of the city of Yellowknife at this time? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this summer I received a request from a constituent to deal with an issue that seemed to pretty clearly fall under municipal jurisdiction. Someone was illegally dumping domestic garbage in a small wooded area about 10 metres off of one of Yellowknife's most densely populated neighbourhoods in my riding. MLAs often receive issues which fall under municipal purview, and I make sure to forward these issues on to city Council to handle. But we looked it up and, sure enough, this piece of land in question is untenured Commissioner's land. So despite being deep...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's all my questions for now.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just on the wellness and recovery centre, I'm just wondering does the Minister have an idea of how we're going to cover the cost for operations of that centre knowing it's a new piece of infrastructure. Do they have estimates for how much staff we might have to add, or are we going to have to add staff in order to be able to operate that facility?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, the only question I would have following that, then, is just whether the department has a set of priorities for which -- I guess projects that are delayed by a certain amount of time and kind of ensuring that the ones that have been sitting on the list for the longest amount of time are being worked on as a priority. So does the department prioritize depending on how long a project's been sitting waiting to go, and just to ensure that we're kind of moving things off the list in an orderly manner? Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you very much for the quick answer.

So just noting that in the 2023-2024 Public Accounts, the committee noted that MACA lapsed almost 30 percent of its budget during the last fiscal year, and that committee learned at the time that those lapses are largely related to carryovers from that fund, the federal investing in Canada infrastructure program. So with that in mind, I note -- the question I have is how will MACA ensure that funding is not lapsed and flows through efficiently to communities? So how can we ensure that the communities have the resources to spend the money that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate that commitment from the Minister, and I think that this is certainly something we could discuss at committee as well. And I don't think I have a follow-up question. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, sorry.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change. Mr. Speaker, just following from my statement, has the Minister considered developing a priority list for actioning outstanding environmental audit recommendations? Thank you.

It sounds to me like we don't have -- or how do I put it. So the expectation is there won't be any additional staffing needed, there won't be any additional resources needed to operate this facility based on what we know right now?

Okay, thank you. And that's really what I meant was not so much that the department would be setting priorities on behalf of communities, but the department would be setting priorities for itself on where it's going to, you know, put its resources in terms of helping communities.

And my next question was going to be if there's any communities that are currently at risk of their funding lapsing. And it sounds like we got some time, so I take some comfort there. And those are all my questions for now, Mr. Chair. Thank you.