Shauna Morgan

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, now I'm curious given the wording of the deputy minister. He said it's generally operating expenses are not covered by short-term borrowing. But have there been occasions where short-term borrowing is or has been used in the recent past for operating expenditures at the power corporation? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's certainly promising, and I would just like to perhaps follow up afterwards with the Minister of education to better understand higher enrolment numbers and what this means for the territory, but I'll leave that here for now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, finally, can patients expect to see the closure of any specialist services offered by Stanton Territorial Hospital or regional hospitals, meaning will patients now need to travel out of territory for treatment when they could currently access that within the NWT? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are actually for the Minister of Health and Social Services following up on previous questions that I've been asking earlier this week.

With regard to the new public administrator, there's lots of sort of concern and anxiety and worry going around about possible, you know, budget cuts associated with this role. So can the Minister clarify is the public administrator's focus simply on finding cost savings, or is the public administrator also going to be focusing on how to actually improve delivery of primary care in the Northwest Territories? Thank you...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The problem that we're facing here is we have an arm's length, you know, corporation that is supposed to be sort of balancing its own budget, but then we're asked to essentially subsidize operations to avoid ratepayers having to pay too much. But there are not many levers we have to, for example, ask them to prove that they can't do things differently or find savings in different ways as opposed to charging ratepayers. And I understand that that's the role that the public utilities board is supposed to serve.

I'm just thinking of a parallel here. You know, we have the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First I just want to establish can the Minister confirm that the Northwest Territories Power Corporation is expected to have a balanced budget each year, or can they run operating deficits? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm wondering whether the Minister can explain why the $1.869 million increase to the school funding framework. I'm hoping that perhaps it's related to increased attendance in schools and therefore increased transfers according to the school funding formula, but maybe the Minister can explain. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I am heartened being able to take away from that that there is a focus on actually improving the patient experience and delivery of care for patients. So given the rumors of impending cuts, can the Minister assure us that we will not see cuts to frontline health care practitioners? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to close out the week by pointing to a spark of inspiration that we can hopefully all get energized about, if folks will excuse the bad pun.

This week Det’on Cho, which is the economic development corporation of the Yellowknives Dene, presented their plan to pursue a major renewable energy project that could supply much needed clean power to N'dilo, Dettah, Yellowknife, and emerging critical minerals operations in the region. We are well aware of how unreliable our Snare hydro system has become. While Yellowknife has typically met about 95 percent of our electricity needs...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So has the government worked with partners to look at the feasibility of establishing an on-the-land camp for the under-housed population that would not require sobriety? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.