Kieron Testart

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member for Inuvik Boot Lake has brought up the loss of funding to Arctic Winter Games. This is a real hit to our kids, to sport. How much longer are we going to lose money as a territory due to revenue leakage by not regulating iGaming in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate the Minister saying it's a call to action and she's going to address this. Those are the right words to say; we need more than that. Will the Minister put the results of this audit and addressing the results with an action plan, will she tie those to performance pay, to promotions, to some sort of internal metric at Housing NWT that will have real consequences for staff if they're unable to address the concerns of these audits, which I'll remind you, go back now to 2008. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the Auditor General's recently released housing in the Northwest Territories report, there's some shocking findings, actually. And I think it deserves it's -- what the press are calling it, scathing, which is unfortunately all too often what we hear about Auditor General reports in the Northwest Territories. So as these findings were very similar from reports of 2008 and 2012, how is the Minister going to do something different? Because both times, housing has responded to these reports, they have failed to make progress. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And this is an easy motion to support, and I expect it will be an easy motion to pass. But it is fitting that someone who left such an indelible mark on the history of the Northwest Territories receives a lot of debate in this House about what he did.

Tony Whitford was not someone I knew as well as perhaps members of his family. I was, of course, much younger than Tony but, you know, I almost -- it's weird not to see him sitting at the table of this Assembly when in the 18th Assembly it was -- you wouldn't have a sitting of this House without Tony coming in for one day...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, you know, I've listened carefully to what the Minister of Finance spoke of in terms of working with a standing committee process, and I've listened to what the other Members have said both for and against the government -- sorry, the budget, rather, the capital budget, and I have some thoughts and some takeaways as well.

You know, the housing money is really seen, I think, by many Members as a centerpiece for this budget, and certainly for the last round of budget negotiations. My concern with this is we often get ahead of ourselves with ambitious capital...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, just to be clear, I don't want to see it just done this term; I want to see it done next year. We need to move this project up. I mean, if we're talking about getting it done this term, it's still too far off. We are able to move very quickly if we put our collective willpower behind it. And, you know, with the MRA, for example, I mean, that development didn't have buy-in at first and then buy-in was developed and then it moved very quickly after that was -- after that took place. So with the inclusion of benefit agreements and a few other pieces like that, they...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'd like to ask questions about the replacement of the mineral resource information system. Is this project currently on budget and on schedule? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the problem has been identified publicly as more applications than there were previously that overwhelmed existing resources. Is that the case? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, who is responsible for the delays that incurred the late fees - was it the students working their summer student jobs and being late in applying, or was it the department that didn't have capacity to meet the demand that was late getting out? Can the Minister just clarify who is responsible for incurring the late payments, because I'm confused. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I asked questions about late payments for SFA students. The Minister said that she will not pay them back even though we have a process for paying back income support late fees incurred on income support payments. Will the Minister work with her department to find what barriers exist to paying off these late fees so we can give our students a break? Thank you very much.