Katrina Nokleby

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just one sec here; my computer has been very finicky these days.

The Mackenzie River Valley Highway will provide an all-season connection between the small communities in the Northwest Territories Sahtu Region, from Tulita to Norman Wells. The highway is being advanced as a series of projects along the Mackenzie River Valley route, with one such project being the Great Bear River Bridge.

The proposed Great Bear River Bridge will be constructed adjacent to the hamlet of Tulita, replacing a section of the winter road that is currently constructed across the Mackenzie River...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I just wanted to ask -- or maybe, again, more of a comment to in the small capital projects last year, we had a significant increase in money, and a lot of that was -- it was a great idea by the department to get money into small communities for small contractors and businesses locally to do work around the parks, etcetera. I'm really in support of that.

Can the Minister speak to whether or not the $2.9 million is enough, or would there actually be extra projects that are -- that we could be funding to have more of that work continue this 'COVID winter', for...

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Minister for the update. Perhaps once the MLA for Hay River's fish plant is built, he can give us some of the money back and we could get a park in Great Slave at that location.

Could the Minister maybe speak a little bit to how she's working with industry, and I guess this is a little bit off topic, but on the -- on that location. I did notice that this at the end of the fall there, there was a deployment by Terra-X, I'm not sure if that's their updated name, of their equipment out of their mine site using that location. It was the first time there...

Thank you, yeah, that does explain it. So I appreciate that.

I guess, then, my question is when do we recalculate that $8 million a year? Is that expected to be a changing number, or is that literally just to keep us on track with where we're going? And then as we add more assets, yes, will that number change. Thank you.

I'm going to look at Hansard so even I can remember what I just said.

So I guess my question is around and I get that this might be department by department, but around the derivative of this number.

So to me, there are already projects and certain assets that we have that are already being handled by different accounting areas of our budget. So this is just all the incidental extras that were not maybe accounted for. So, for example, contaminated sites were brought up. Well, a lot of those would be accounted for under federal funding, under other pots, Infrastructure, ENR is dealing with...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, then I'll ask that question. What is the economic spinoff? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I just want to say I do agree with me colleague about looking ahead and being proactive on operations costs when we are making our infrastructure and capital plans.

I want to say that I'm actually pleased to see a large infrastructure investment going forward. One thing when economies are bad, that governments do, is they build infrastructure. It's a way that we can keep people in the Northwest Territories employed over the next while as COVID really does make our future quite uncertain, particularly our economic future going forward.

Another piece that keeps...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Minister for that answer and hope that there will be some newer innovations, sort of incentives, to come.

What is the Minister -- in the Minister's opinion and the department's opinion are the biggest barriers to the Taltson hydro expansion project from an ENR perspective? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to ask some questions about energy which could be directed to the Minister of Infrastructure; however, I had such a great time with Minister Thompson on our trip that I'm going to ask ENR about these questions.

So my questions for Minister Thompson are, is what new innovation discussed at COP26 does the Department of ENR feel can best help the North to make a transition to clean energy? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That was a great segue to my next question which was in the Minister's opinion, was the GNWT successful in making headway to getting additional funding from the federal government towards transitioning the NWT off of fossil fuels? I know there was a lot of conversations happening, but could the Minister share whether or not he felt they were successful. Thank you.