Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm comfortable with that answer. I mean, it is in flux, and I'll be fair to that point. It's tough to nail it down exactly. But, Mr. Speaker, Indigenous organizations and their economic wings aren't a number in flux, and they're very easy to define. Is there any details on how many Indigenous organizations, including their corporations, will be impacted by this? In essence, the numbers that will be affecting them and their smaller communities ultimately is what I'm trying to get at and that does affect Yellowknife, but it also affects the regional Indigenous...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it recently came up on my Facebook about places that have talked about the closure of the diamond mine, and there's one scheduled -- there's a public discussion scheduled in a few weeks here about the impacts on the community. And, Mr. Speaker, it kind of makes you wonder about how many jobs are going to be lost in this process because we have, as potentially scheduled, Ekati at 2027, Diavik at 2026, and I think Gahcho Kue is in early 2030. So, Mr. Speaker, my question for the Minister of ITI is how many potential jobs will be lost through this process that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If someone went out on the Ingraham Trail and built a permanent structure, and one example I'll give is the tree house tower of some sort, out of building material and other types of things -- who knows what it's made out of; it doesn't look safe -- the Department of ECC would be instructing that that had to be cleaned up, torn down, etcetera. So why are these structures being allowed on Commissioner's land because they're downtown Yellowknife but if it was on the Ingraham Trail, they'd be posting an order to clean up? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to try to recognize each session -- or, you know, to the best of my ability, one of the interpreters, one of my friends, Ms. Sarah Cleary. She puts in an enormous amount of work keeping up with us. Sometimes when we get going too fast, I do worry about the hard work she has to do, but I'm very grateful that Sarah here is representing her language and the spirit of her community, and she's a Sahtu constituent in Yellowknife. So anyway, I'm always grateful to see her. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about the encampment again today, but I also want to talk about it from the perspective of the impacts on the community. And what I mean by that is the residents have to live next to them, businesses, and even in situations like such as yesterday, the museum, government, and other types of organizations, and private businesses in that. They have to be silenced. You can't have the museum director over here yelling do something here. No, government can't get away with that. But residents, let's start with that, Mr. Speaker. They have to listen...

Again, Mr. Speaker, I know this Minister has the ability to do this and I know the policy shop exists and I know they have the talent to go liberate wording and structure from everything. Is there any reason that the Minister couldn't agree today that she could come up and table a draft policy by the last day of this session? That gives just over a week to come up with something and we can put a footnote saying and we're still going to develop this in partnership with our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, and we would have something in place to move forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe I've sent this Minister directly concerns under his justice portfolio hat of the encampment downtown and causing concerns. There's even pictures out there of piles of jerry cans sitting there. Mr. Speaker, what does it take for this Minister to get over there and inspect these encampments? If we're going to allow them to happen, to ensure that they're safe so that no one dies in this situation. Because that's the last thing we want, and it'll be such an impossible situation to take back. Thank you.

Good point, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there was a press release on May 25th of this year, talked about encampments, basically there they are, talked about inspections. I want to know what ECC is doing about inspecting these encampments to make sure they comply as the rules, such as the safety, proper use of public lands, complying with fire and waste safe guidelines. That falls under his purview and stewardship. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to talk about a very serious subject here right now. If you didn't know, I'm going to tell you there was a fire on the encampment next to the museum, Mr. Speaker. This is a very serious matter, even coming from me, Mr. Speaker. I'm trying to remain the right approach because it's frustrating. Yesterday I was raising the issue -- I wanted, actually, Mr. Speaker, to even have an emergency debate on this particular issue but our rules won't allow this because I didn't have an hour's notice to give notice to this particular problem.

Mr. Speaker, in...

Thank you. I'll take that olive branch, Mr. Speaker, because safety matters.

Mr. Speaker, the last piece I'll take and ask -- or sorry, the last piece I'll ask in this particular case, again speaks to my Member's statement, which is what are they going to do in recognition that you are the lead Minister on this homelessness issue to ensure that these encampments are inspected, people are safe, and we don't have another fire?

And lastly, Mr. Speaker, this was right next to a pile of propane tanks and I even heard that one went off. Thank you.