Julian Morse

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Infrastructure. It's quite simple. Will the Minister of Infrastructure bring forward accessibility legislation for the NWT during the life of the 20th Assembly?

Just getting the clock going there. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a very, very quick comment, and I actually don't even need a response to this. I just wanted to note that I was very happy to see I'll wait a second here.

Sorry, Mr. Chair. Actually, I have a question. Noting that the reduction to community justice committees and projects, can the Minister speak to that a little bit?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And that is understandable, so I won't continue to push on that one. But just moving one item down on the same page in the business plan, exploring options to support economic reconciliation. Certainly, I was I had the privilege of sitting in on the Indigenous economic forum that occurred in April, and I was very excited by what I was hearing there. And I just note that the again, like, speaking to measures and targets, the measures that we have here are a number of funding agreements. And I don't think we've really identified a target in terms of what are we trying to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, so I'm going to go back to the questions I was asking earlier as the Premier rightfully pointed out I was in the wrong section. I'm still in the process of familiarizing myself with the great machine that is our government.

So, yeah, back to that question, I think I'd repose it. I'm just looking for kind of some explanation as to what the government's goals are for selfgovernment and Indigenous rights agreements over the term of this Assembly. You know, publishing updates to the GNWT principles and interests just does not seem like a very ambitious goal, and so I'm...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have questions on this one, again related to the business plan, which contains all the juicy information, page 72 in this case. So there's a couple items in there with relation to a negotiating selfgovernment and other Indigenous rights agreements. And so the first question I'll ask on that is just the actions to support the mandate commitment, is EIA working with departments who will review the GNWT principles and interests to explore possible updates? You know, I just I would note to the Premier that it seems at face value as a bit of an underwhelming commitment...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, MACA has recently released a new emergency plan, which seeks to better clarify roles and responsibilities for the GNWT, NGOs, and municipalities during emergencies and evacuations. I appreciate the department's work on this, and having read through the plan, I acknowledge that it is clear about roles and responsibilities; however, in terms of current reality, I think there is still a fair bit of work to do to figure out the fine details of how this plan will work on the ground, particularly in relation to local emergency management organizations. I also...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, let me just get organized here.

So, yeah, I'm going to try and keep it to ten minutes but similar to the Member for Yellowknife North, I mean, we are talking about a very large document so it's hard to go through all my comments on it in such a short period of time. But I want to speak kind of generally to it and then speak to some of the things that I would have liked to see in there and maybe some things that I would like to advocate to be put in there.

So, first of all, have we established measurable targets? I think it's a bit of a mixed bag. There are areas where...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for the answer. So I think the Minister's touched upon something important there, and that is that the communities currently the way the plan is written, communities can come for reimbursement but, Mr. Speaker, this doesn't get at the issue of the costs of capacity building for communities to respond to these emergencies. So communities are in a position right now where they are taking on responsibility that I don't think was completely clear that they needed to take on. I think that that was very clear during the wildfire season last year...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, how is the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs proposing to deal with the lack of capacities communities have to deal with the increasing number of emergencies within their boundaries? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for your indulgence in allowing us an extra kind of to finish up our statements. I will try to be quick like I was yesterday.

So I left off on ITI and speaking to the economic vision. And just a few thoughts on that. I think I would like to see a timeline. I'd like to see that timeline be short and towards the beginning of this Assembly as opposed to toward the end. If we need to develop a vision, if we need to be implementing a vision, I want us to be implementing that vision, you know, today, and if not today, as quickly as possible, because I think if we're...