Julian Morse

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The first question I have is, we know that the 2023 Wildfire After-Action Review noted that more effective fire behaviour modeling software is needed. Is the department planning for wildfire modeling software upgrades to support the new fire centre's new coordination centre? Will that form part of the capital plan in future years, or is it part of the plan right now, or can the Minister give us some updates on that?

No, thanks.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate that answer, and I guess I would just ask back, based on that answer, I mean, what are we doing to support the communities in streamlining whatever reporting process we need to. Just because I think the bottom line here, I think we can all agree, we want this money to get spent, this is money that's coming in from the feds, it's in the communities. We absolutely want those projects getting done. So it's really just a reporting issue. I have a feeling there's a bit more to it than that. But can the Minister just discuss how the department is providing support to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Member from Monfwi asking that we went back because we were moving so quick, I missed my questions. But the first question, in this capital plan how much is MACA budgeted to receive in ICIP funding, so the investing in Canada infrastructure program, just to start.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, I appreciate that response. However, I think that there's probably some areas where GNWT does have full control over. Even if areas don't have full control, setting them as a priority and saying that we want to get this one done quickly helps us communicate with our various partners as to why we're moving on something quickly. So I would just push back to the Minister. I think it may be helpful to establish a priority list, and it will help us move these things from things that we're working on to things that we have done. So can I just ask the Minister to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the GNWT issued a press release today highlighting release of the 2025 Northwest Territories environmental audit, celebrating notable progress over the past five years since the 2020 audit was released. Certainly, I think there have been some positive improvements, and I join the department in celebrating those, however, I also want to note that while identifying some areas of success, the audit team found consistent themes with the previous 2020 audit, including:

Insufficient capacity and inadequate resources to participate in the co-management system;

Insuf...

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...