Shauna Morgan

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. So the Literacy Outreach Centre is in danger of shutting down if it can't find classroom space to operate, new funding, and new partners. Has the Minister or ECE staff had a chance to meet yet with the staff who have been running the Literacy Outreach Centre, either Inclusion NWT staff or Aurora College staff, as well as with any other interested partners to help find a path forward for the centre? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Nothing further. I appreciate the amount of information that is being shared about that, and I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So if we focus back on prolific offenders, would it be the department or would it be the RCMP that would take a lead on, you know, identifying and keeping track of or reporting on prolific offenders? So what role exactly would the department play? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question about part of the business plan that I think might fit into this section, but it might span across a couple sections. It's around targets to establish first a baseline of numbers of prolific offenders, so, you know, offenders who keep repeatedly offending, and to define what that means and then report data on it to help identify appropriate interventions, so trying to look at people who keep coming back through the system over and over and over again and then figure out what are better ways to address this as opposed to continuing to just arrest them...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to quickly ask: I know we're maintaining a leased space in Ottawa for, you know, business that happens in Ottawa and intergovernmental affairs in that way. But can the Minister confirm whether we're -- we still have a staff person based in Ottawa that is managing that office? Like, do we still have an office manager or are we just leasing the space? My understanding is that we're trying to find creative ways to, like, share that leased space with other groups, like Indigenous governments who might want to use it from time to time. But do we still pay an...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I very much appreciate that willingness by this unit to sort of be flexible or work with the other initiatives that are underway to sort of change the plan as necessary. I mean, I'll be honest and say my biggest fear about the sort of initial exercise of sorting it into core or non-core services and what's needed and not needed is that we'll just take a big look at everything we're already doing and then ask the question what are people going to miss most if we take it away, and if we feel like people won't notice as much or miss it as much then we'll just sort of take...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So thank you for that answer, for the detailed answer. So just to clarify, though, that during proceedings, during the public portion of an environmental assessment when, you know, evidence is being presented, like, those subject-matter experts and maybe they're, you know, water scientists, hydrologists, or maybe they're biologists, do they -- do they get to publicly present the information they have that they think it's important to know about the potential impacts, say, of a road, or are those presentations -- you said that they get to inform infrastructure officials...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you also clarify, so they're in charge of the administration of public land. Is that land only outside of municipal boundaries and does it include, like, settlement lands that have been settled within Indigenous land claims? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I'll -- my final question here, my colleague was talking about the environmental audit, and we see here that there's no money at least listed in the budget to cover the cost of doing the NWT environmental audit. And my impression was that this was a year when we were going to be doing a new audit. Can the Minister explain whether we are intending to do the environmental audit independent review this coming year, and if so, where the money's going to be coming from. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay. Thanks for that. That's something we can follow up on in our discussions.

Under the transboundary waters -- the line item under transboundary waters, can the Minister explain why last year's revised estimates went way up to $1.18 million. Perhaps just jog our memory, and then why we're back down to 285 for this coming year. Thank you, Madam Chair.