Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, the consequence of a government not delivering on its mandate is really up to the public. It's up to the voters to decide the consequences if we don't achieve the results in this House. As I said, I'm confident that we're going to be able to fulfill the majority of our mandate commitments. However, in honesty, Madam Speaker, I think a lot of the public in the next voting will be about the COVID, how we've related to the how we responded to the COVID pandemic, and that's not in our mandate but it was the number 1 priority. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I'm kind of wondering if other Members besides myself wonder if we could turn back time, knowing that we'd be hit with the pandemic crisis never seen in our lifetime and lasting around two years, would we still have defined 22 priorities for this government. However, in saying that, despite the challenges over the past two years, we continue to work to achieve the majority of our commitments by the end of our term.

The Member is correct, that 65 percent of our commitments were in progress in our February 2022 status report. At that point, we had fulfilled 23.5 percent...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think I'll combine two in one. We've since completed, since the February 2022 status report, we've since completed another 10 percent of our mandate items and moved out of the early planning for another 3 percent. The latest numbers I have for August 2022 are 58 percent of our commitments are in progress and 34 percent have been fulfilled. I don't have a firm percentage on hand precisely to find a majority, but the numbers show that we've made significant progress between February and August.

As for the 75 percent, as stated, COVID did slow the progress but we're...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I'd like to recognize the page from Range Lake, Ace JumboMurdoch, and we're really excited to have him in the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, if I can redirect that to the Minister of Housing. It's housing questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also wanted to this is a passion of mine as well so I will try to be more concise on this one.

The three territories did work together to develop a panterritorial chapter, things that we have in common across the territories. And so from that chapter, we've been lobbying, the three of us, I hate to say it, it may be inappropriate, but I call us the dynamic trio, the three Premiers have been lobbying the federal government together to actually lobby for the needs of all territories because they're similar in some areas, different in others. So again, we've been meeting...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The MLA is absolutely correct. The Arctic and Northern Policy Framework was released in 2019 which and then after that work was done, the next step was to be implementing the Arctic and Northern Policy Framework. Sadly to say, the federal government, we've met twice in this government on that with the federal minister, perhaps due to COVID, perhaps other reasons. However, it's important, the Arctic and Northern Policy Framework is not just about making sure that every funding that goes to the Northwest Territories is identified in there. That policy framework was to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member again is right, the federal government is implementing military defence mechanisms and a budget associated with the safety of the Arctic. And I support that. We do need to support the safety issues. But I've been adamant in saying that Arctic safety is not just about missiles or boats in the sea. It has to incorporate Arctic sovereignty, and that means addressing our gaps. We need to build our economy. We need to close our infrastructure gap. We need telecommunications. We need ports. We need all of the things like I had said that contribute to healthy and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'll start with a little bit of a clarification. Absolutely, the Member is correct, we need to be lobbying the federal government for this on a regular basis. The Council of Leaders table has met with the Minister the federal Minister, Minister Vandal, twice in this Assembly. However, myself and Ministers have constantly met with the federal government, and every time I meet with the federal Ministers, applicable Ministers, I bring this up because why do the work if it's not going to be addressed?

So the Council of Leaders did identify gaps. They identified their...

I spoke to the other one too but this is kind of in the same concept, I guess, is that my issue is that we have people that are making minimum wage in society and currently, at this point, they don't get a CPI increase although I would like to see that. I know that we are looking at changing that. But at this point and the other thing is that some Members have more than one constituent assistant, Madam Chair. Some of them have two, one in their riding and one here in the capital is what I've noticed as well. So I think in the spirit of fairness to Members that may have more than one or two...