Katrina Nokleby

Yes. I will commit to that personally and notifying the Member, and the other relevant Members, every time there is a delay in the resupply or any changes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I can commit that everything is on track with MTS for this upcoming season. We are looking for new ways to provide reliable community resupply and ensure that we are gaining our maximum value. We will have the four double-hulled barges delivered to Tuktoyaktuk. August 12th or 15th, it will show up in Tuktoyaktuk. We were the first to be approved under the Oceans Protection Plan on that. This one is a 75/25 percent funding. The seven other projects that we have in under that plan will all be at 100 percent funding. We are looking at the changes. We are reviewing at...

Public engagement is a critical part of the way our government does business. It ensures that the GNWT is visible, accessible, and answerable to the people it serves. In this case, while we engaged with industry and regulatory entities regarding the airport work in Fort Smith to ensure that the runway would continue to be safe and meet federal regulations and maintain a consistent level of service, we did not ensure that the community of Fort Smith understood the project's purpose and benefits before we completed the work. We understand that airport maintenance and improvements are especially...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since receiving the letter from Fort Smith leadership in June of 2019, the former Minister of the Department of Infrastructure and I have both provided multiple responses that explained why the decision was made to proceed with the project.

Transport Canada sets the standards by which airports are designed and operated. Airport owners and operators, such as the GNWT, apply those standards and construct and operate airports to meet current and future operational and regulatory needs. The GNWT reviews airport infrastructure on a regular basis to identify current and future...

We definitely commit to having an open and transparent and collaborative government. I would like to actually have the conversation, though, first, with the membership as well as the two co-chairs of the council so that we can determine if that is the best movement for it. Personally, right now, I think that should be fine, but I do want to respect their privacy and their thoughts and whether or not they thought there needed to be some element of confidentiality around the council.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The business advisory council is one of the three advisory bodies that our government is looking to put in place to guide our actions going forward. We have received initial input from the Members, so thank you for that, and we have incorporated their feedback into our terms of reference as well as our composition.

I appreciate it has now been just over two months since I and Minister Wawzonek first announced the proposed establishment of the council. It was partly due to our subsequent decision to establish the other two councils and then create an overarching theme...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I can commit to that. I also wanted to state that one of the conversations that I'm having with my deputy minister at this point is that I want to see a creation of an engagement unit within Infrastructure to deal with these exact types of situations and not have that be a tack-on, add-on to the project manager's or the technical project manager's role. While it's very preliminary, I would then also welcome your input on how you would like to see that unit get formed. That is my plan, that is what I've conveyed to my deputy minister, and we're going to start doing...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess, you know, that is part of the whole goal, is to have a whole-of-government revamp and look at our procurement dollars and what we are going to be doing. Everything that the Member has said is noted. We definitely want to ensure that we maximize our dollars. I know that I will only be hearing about it if we don't. I'm leery of creating more policies when all I heard through the campaign was that there are too many policies and procedures, and we're not doing great at executing them anyway, but I understand your point. I do commit to putting in language, or...

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is my understanding that that grant is fairly flexible and can be used for different items within the community, its cultural well-being, education and training, community economic development, a small portion going to administration. I will commit that we can give you an annual report. I think that is completely a fair and valid request, and so we definitely will do that.

Like a lot of the programming that we are talking about with the federal government or within our GNWT programs, we talked a lot around flexibility. You will see with the SEED funding under ITI that...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The last 13 years of my life, I have been a woman in a non-traditional role, and I now am in charge of a department that is full of those exact people. That is the profession that I have been trying to change, myself, personally, for many years, so I am well aware of that. Unfortunately, a lot of these technical positions are traditionally male-dominated positions. We have problems with getting Indigenous people into sciences, and it's not from a lack of capacity or ability. It is a lack of our education system. This is all the conversation we are having around, and I...