Katrina Nokleby

Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, want to thank all of our staff and the committee for the hard work on this report. One of the reasons that this was an important topic to myself is that I have also had a lot of involvement with the Giant Mine for many, many years as a consultant. And, in fact, that was actually the reason that I ended up in the Northwest Territories to begin with, was to take a job with the technical adviser at Giant Mine.

As an employee of the contractor at the mine, as a consultant at the mine, later on I have watched, over the years, numerous contacts and workers from the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. And, again, this addresses some of the issues I mentioned about capacity in communities but not only within the communities but within our own government. We were lucky enough as a committee to go and lucky to go and explore or take a tour of the Yellowknife City Solid Waste Facility. They don't call it a "dump" anymore. And in that, part of the tour was done by the contractor who is operating that site. And it was apparent to me that having that industry knowledge and expertise was really helping to improve the function of the waste facility. In particular, I found...

Thank you, Madam Chair. And yes, I agree with what my colleague has said. And to build upon that in a more sort of microscale is when this work gets done around environmental assessment and cleanup and I know that there's probably been some changes, and I hope there's been some changes since I was bidding on these old contaminated sites myself, but it's always a battle to get proper budgets in place for any sort of assessment and reclamation work with the consultants. And I think in this area it's at the disservice to the consultants, not what I generally am saying about GNWT contracts. In...

Mr. Speaker, the GNWT has been paying increasing attention to the opioid crisis due to the recent upsurge in death by overdose, or as the department sanitizes it, "drug poisoning" or "opioid contamination." As already mentioned in this Chamber by my colleagues, in 2022 six opioidrelated deaths were tracked in the community of Hay River.

Regular MLAs have repeatedly raised concern over the escalating drug crisis in the NWT. Crack cocaine is rampant in all of our communities, and the number of people who have lost their lives due to opioids is soaring, particularly in the community of Hay River...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister commit to ensuring that the federal government knows that the GNWT will not stand for any of the guns to be added back to the C21 bill? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that. And I also do want to thank the Minister for a stronger response back to the government after we first spoke about the initial GNWT position.

Can the Minister then speak, does the GNWT anticipate having to submit any more information to this committee or have any further interaction or ability to input to the committee before any other decisions are made? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on June 23rd the federal government completed its second reading of Bill C21 which would make certain consequential amendments with respect to firearms. Currently the bill is under review by the federal standing committee on public safety and national security.

Following Bill C21's second reading, there was a clear public outcry from coast to coast to coast about the negative impacts of this bill on the way of life for Indigenous people many of who are subsistence hunters. The purpose of this bill was to improve public safety and yet the people most affected...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I'm really glad to hear that the Minister has invited the federal government to come, and I hope that that will he will continue to apply some pressure there and not just allow us to be sloughed off as often sometimes seems to be the case with the feds.

Can the Minister commit that not only pushing for that federal government meeting but to then actively engage our side of the House in ensuring that our constituents and people in our ridings are having the opportunity to meet with the Minister should they come to the territory? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Justice.

Can the Minister please give us an update on where Bill C21 is at federally and what he thinks is the next step that the federal government will be taking? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't think I asked about the number of units. I asked the Minister how much money, besides the one position that hasn't done anything, did the GNWT spend on Lynn's Place and Spruce Bough. Thank you.