Katrina Nokleby

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know with the BDIC loans that we just recently did, the first intake was only northern residents. Then we did have money left after that, so we opened to southern. For that particular instance, yes, they were the same. They are eligible for the tourism product funding. I would say that the answer there would be yes, but we do look at, when we are evaluating the proposals, how much the money is being spent in the North. It's not so much where the owner or the person making the proposal resides. It's about how much of that money is going to be retained in the North and...

I don't think we need to wait, necessarily, on the review to start making some of the changes. I do believe I have shared a letter where we made some small tweaks to the BIP policy or the procurement policies to that we could favour more northern businesses. As it was part of our mandate and priorities set by all of us, we are going to continue along with revamping the BIP program to make sure that it actually does what it intends and the loopholes are closed within the program.

We are also going to be doing a lot of communications around our Buy North or Shop NWT going forward and encouraging...

Thank you, Madam Chair. At this time - actually, it's funny, we've just had this conversation – we don't want to say no funding for that program because we want to give the opportunity to the organizers to see if they can somehow adapt their program and still manage to put it on. If someone is going to be creative and come up with a COVID solution. We've been encouraging. We don't want to be like, "Oh, sorry, we already took your money and spent it somewhere else." We still plan to flow that money to that group so that they can do with it and see how they can adapt. Of course, we will...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We pay 40 percent and the federal government pays 60 percent of the funding under the CAP program. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. At this time, I really couldn't tell you what was going to happen. We would be taking direction under the Chief Public Health Officer. Depending where we were at in her plan and what the regulations or what she had in place, we would be adapting to that. That is part of, actually, what we are working on right now to get the parks open when she does move into phase 2, is what does that look like from a logistics perspective, if there are still restrictions of people being able to be in proximity. We'll have to look at each campground. Are we closing this site because it...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know that it is actually quite a complex system to get going. I have had numerous conversations with some of our surveyors and the legalities behind going to the online staking. It does seem pretty archaic in this day and age that we are forcing people to go out where there are no roads to actually literally pound stakes in the ground. I will maybe pass this over to Ms. Strand to just, perhaps, provide a timeline, if she has one. Thank you.

One second, I just have so many pages here. Fees and payments, we had an increase of $6,000 that we had to move over to compensation and benefits. They were moved to reinstate a budget that was used to cover a lack of incremental collective bargaining salary increases. There was the delay with the negotiations, and we had to go and back-pay people. That had to get moved around in different areas in the funding. The bargaining salary increases included things like registration fees, professional memberships, miscellaneous fees, licences and permits, non-employee courses and training. We had an...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Perhaps, that just indicates that we need to properly name these positions for what they actually do. Nobody in the North really does only one thing. There are many Jacks-of-all-trades or Jills-of-all-trades in the North, so these people actually do things that are beyond the oil and gas sector. I would like to say that "nothing going on" is a mischaracterization, and I believe those people believe their work is important, so I do want to say that they're working hard in our oil and gas sector. As mentioned to the other Member, perhaps I need to come back to the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think that is actually a really great point. We put on a conference as the engineers, and, for the first time ever, we are like, "Hey, the snow castle's on," and they provided a little bit of a tourism piece for their partners or anyone who came. They were all like, Oh my God, this is fantastic." Even just a small organization taking two seconds to put together a one-pager to say, "These are all the other benefits," and getting that out in time enough so that people can actually extend it onto their business trip, I would say that, in the business circles I run in, I...

In the pre-COVID era, I had directed my department that I wanted a review of MTS, and I will continue to do so. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.