Katrina Nokleby

Yes, I would like to bring my deputy minister, Dr. Joe Dragon, and my director of corporate services, Mr. Gary Brennan.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Could I ask for clarification? Is there looking at reallocating money from those three infrastructure projects to other projects?

I have noted what the Member has said and his concerns with the Rae Access Road. I have to apologize; I didn't quite catch your question. I do commit that, obviously, we're going to do lessons learned. That's a big part of the engineering world and I know you're probably going to get sick of, just as much as you get sick of the Premier's saying she's a social worker, you may get sick of me saying I'm engineer after a while, but that is the engineering process, to go back and look at our past ones and see what we've done wrong. Clearly the Member has a feeling and believes that we've done wrong...

Thank you, Madam Chair. No, because, as mentioned before, this is the snapshot pre-COVID. It hasn't been adjusted at this point. I think you could expect that you would see an adjustment in next year's estimates based on COVID. Further to that, if you would like to have a further conversation on the fuel services, I would commit to offering my department for that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following six documents: "Follow-up Letter for Oral Question 12-19(2): Fort Smith Airport Infrastructure"; "Follow-up Letter for Oral Question 23-19(2): Economy of the Northwest Territories"; "Follow-up Letter for Oral Question 116-19(2): Tlicho All-Season Road Contract"; "Follow-up Letter for Oral Question 159-19(2): Yellowknife Motor Vehicle Office Hours"; "Businesses Participating in the TASR Project," additional information for return to written question 5-19(2); and "Slave Geological Province Corridor Contracts List September 1, 2015-March 31...

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I already mentioned before and in the email I sent you, we did do that exact thing with the RFP and changing one small item to encourage northern -- it was a situation where, if they don't even meet the minimum scoring, then they don't actually even make it to the financial part or evaluation, which is where all the BIP comes into play. We made that change very rapidly, very quickly, when I said to Dr. Dragon that we needed to do something in the meantime. I recognize that the review is going to take long.

I just want to email people or send out letters. I had my...

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is my understanding there is no criteria. I am just wondering if it's perhaps an education piece, that we maybe need to be letting people know that they could kind of come together with a proposal that would have more of a significant build or such. I am almost wondering if this is perhaps a function of small businesses just accessing the pot on their own and nobody really thinking to get together to create a large proposal for accessing the funding. My understanding, there is no criteria or limits to what could be accessed; it's just a request, and then the funding...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to hand this over to Dr. Dragon. Thank you.

[Microphone turned off] ...I apologize, but it's just that last bit of the question. I definitely would commit to having this conversation with the federal government about having the Tlicho involvement from the start. Once we have that funding, that conversation is going to begin with the Tlicho government. I made a promise to those chiefs, and I made a promise at roundup in front of those chiefs of what I was going to be doing with my department to ensure that Northerners worked and that we built meaningful Indigenous businesses out of that. I still stand behind that commitment, and I commit...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I definitely commit to having a look at this and taking the Member's points under notice and having that conversation with him. It sounds like he has lots of great ideas, so I would suggest that, if he wants to put them together and send them to me, that would be great. We will be having, as I said, that fulsome procurement review across departments. I understand that that will probably take longer than the Member would like, but that is the nature of what we have to do. We have noted the policy comment, and we will definitely incorporate that into our review. Thank you...