Katrina Nokleby

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I am open to having a conversation. Right now, I do know that we do have the northern residency requirement for some of these programs. All of the focus within the guidelines are for northern retention or use in the North. I do recognize, though, that you can tell people all you want that this is the way that you should do it, and if there are no teeth or penalties in there, then people will take advantage. I do commit to the Member to reviewing the program policies for myself and seeing where we can incorporate, I don't want to call it penalties, but...

Thank you, Madam Chair. In Gameti, we spent $18,536. In Whati, we spent $6,500. In Wekweeti, we spent $4,000. Now, you're going to make me know all of your communities. Sorry, I don't have them on here, so maybe I'll just ask Ms. St-Denis to confirm for the remainder of the Member's region. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I imagine this has something to do around liability, as our parks operators carry the liability insurance for the parks. We did look at, last year, a winter strategy in getting our parks opened. It's something that I am committed to revisiting now that I am the Minister of the department. I will definitely have a look at potentially a winter strategy coming up, especially if we are not going to be having our residents leaving the North to go do, maybe, some of those winter vacations, considering where we may be next year. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I believe the two-to-four-year timeline was towards the online staking that the Member was asking about, not about the plan. I think I will just ask Ms. Strand to answer this question. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just offer that that goes both ways. Thank you, Madam Chair.

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.