Frieda Martselos

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Members' statement today is about the need for our NWT corrections services to focus on the successful social reintegration and rehabilitation of incarcerated individuals. The Department of Justice recently completed a workplace assessment of all correctional facilities in the Northwest Territories. The results of that assessment were obvious as it exposed several long-standing issues pertaining to staff morale, safety, and preparedness, among other things. In a previous Member's statement, I spoke about the importance of offender rehabilitation. Today, however, I...

Just further to that, there is not a neutral board or a group? It's the five sports organizations that decide how the $5,200,000 is going to be distributed across the territory? Those five sporting groups are all stationed in the capital. There is so much disparity with regional centres and small communities. It just doesn't make sense how things are done. I don't hear much common sense here. As a government, if we don't start doing things and being accountable and transparent in what we do and how we distribute public funds, it's disturbing to me that this is the way we operate. If you're a...

Madam Chair, for the School of Community Government, I agree with the concept, but I think we are going towards the concept of the polytechnic university. I think that some of these funds should be geared to a program at the new polytechnic university. This type of funding should be going to the polytechnic university and not in community governments.

I know SAOs are very hard to come by, even at a regional level, even at a First Nations level, and I think that, if we combined our forces with the business management courses and everything else that is offered at a polytechnic, we are kind of...

Madam Chair, I think I am making myself very clear of what I want with that line. I am not talking about any other line. I'm just talking about that one line. It's, all the way through, the same. I made it very clear, and I would like to know how much it is, broken down. I am not asking for 50,000 different figures. I am asking for a figure because we go per capita in assets for the capital, what we give to the regional centres and what's left for the communities. That is all I'm asking. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Further to that question, then: if you are going per capita and according to communities and it's all 33 communities, including the capital, that doesn't leave very much for small communities and regions. I would like to know the breakdown of the regional centres, the capital, and then the small communities. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to use my Member's statement today to give my thanks and appreciation to all of the residents of Fort Smith. Specifically, I would like to thank all workers from both private and public sectors, as well as all business owners within the community. Places like Kaeser's grocery store, the Northern Store, Wally's drugstore, Fort Smith Construction, Petro Canada, Tim Hortons, and the staff at the Bank of Montreal, TDC, Berro's pizza, and Anna's Home Cooking, to name a few.

It has been a tough and uncertain year for many people as we navigated through this...

What I am getting at is that we are always saying that we are going to support Aboriginal and northern business, and here we are once again. This is a Crown corporation under the auspices of the Government of the Northwest Territories, and we are paying $16 million for the assets of Northland Utilities in Hay River. I find that is, for clarity, not our mandate, and we are setting a precedent. The next time, over here, when the Yellowknives want to get out of it, we are going to start that here, too, with Northland Utilities? I know they just signed a five-year deal because I keep track of...

I want to go down now to the NWT Hydro Corporation. There is $105,084,000. What does that include in that $105,084,000 of borrowing? What is that? What does it include?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am going to go back to those P3s, especially the one with the Stanton Territorial Hospital. In the estimated balance, it has $130,431,000 and an estimated balance in 2022 of $127,129,000, so that could not be on the balance, Madam Chair? I am just wondering because it already goes down less than $3 million, and we know the project is almost $1 billion with the 35 years. We also know in that same P3 that we also have the legacy building next to it that we don't own anymore because we turned it over then to renovate, and that is part of the P3. When we go back to...

Will the Minister commit to including Highway No. 5 in any future contract negotiations for new cell service along highways in the NWT?