Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I have some questions for the Minister of Justice. Back in June, we made some extraordinary efforts to pass something called a temporary, variation of temporary time periods COVID-19 Pandemic Measures Act. What this piece of legislation does is: it allows Cabinet, by order, to extend or adjust a date, deadline, or other time period prescribed in any act that our government has in place. I'd like to confirm with the Minister of Justice whether we've actually ever used this legislation. Mahsi, Madam Speaker.

Yes. As a former city councillor here, we do not want to implement this on top of municipalities without ensuring that they actually have adequate resources. One of the other major elements of this review of ATIPP was looking at ways to improve training and development of resource materials for all the different departments. Can the Minister provide a timeline for when this training is going to be completed and new support materials developed?

Thanks, Madam Chair. When I look at all the other departments in here, there are a whole bunch of shiny new toys for everybody except for the Housing Corporation. What's going on here? We have lots of retrofits, I get that, but no new units? I just don't get it. Is this the glass ceiling that we're talking about here, where the Housing Corporation cannot take on any new units because there is concern around O and M? Is that what we're talking about here? This is a question for the Minister. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. If I did my math correctly on page 66, it looks like there are going to be 104 retrofits and nine new units. The nine new units seem to be in Inuvik. Can someone tell me: is that RCMP housing, or is that housing that is going to be made available to residents? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Where I'm going to go with this is: I am very worried that this project is going to get referred to an environmental assessment. There was no reason whatsoever that that had to happen, had our government actually properly consulted and worked with the Gwich'in Government in relation to this project. I also don't think it's a great idea where GNWT willy-nilly decides that it can reallocate pieces of land that have been designated for certain purposes for other purposes. You can't take stuff out of a reindeer-grazing reserve and unilaterally decide you're going to change it...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I think we're jumping the gun here and including money for the Whati transmission line in the capital estimates when we haven't even made an application to the federal government yet, apparently, for this project. There hasn't been any analysis of the cost of a transmission line versus the cost of having three mini-hydro projects that could serve the three Tlicho communities. I just don't understand why this project is being pushed without that kind of analysis. Can the Minister commit to provide that analysis to this side of the House? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I want to follow up on my colleague's questions, colleague from Monfwi, about the Whati transmission line. I raised a number of concerns with this project in the last Assembly in a rather hurried review of the capital budget that was carried out in one day in August of 2019. This kind of project just kind of came out of thin air. I'm just wondering: there was money appropriated in the 2020-2021 Capital Estimates for this project. Was any of it actually spent, and if so, how much? Thanks, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the Minister for that. With the surprise reduction in water quality monitoring by Alberta and the federal government, this would seem to have some impact on our ability to detect water quality changes. We need to have repeated, continuous, long-term water quality monitoring, and that's one of the cornerstones of the Transboundary Water Agreement. Can the Minister tell us what impact the reductions in water quality monitoring have had on our ability to detect and predict adverse impacts on NWT waters and people?

Merci, Monsieur le President. My question is for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. In my statement earlier today, I noted that the Alberta provincial government and Alberta energy regulator unilaterally decided to reduce water quality monitoring as a result of the pandemic and to provide so-called industry relief. Can the Minister confirm whether he received any notice of these reductions in water monitoring by Alberta, and what we are doing to prevent this from happening again? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Look, lest anybody gets the wrong idea, I know our people at the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation work very hard at their jobs, and they are obviously very creative in finding other pots of money and ways of leveraging funding and so on. However, the fact is that we need more money spent on housing. I want to reiterate. I am right behind the Minister when she goes to the Financial Management Board to get more money for capital projects, new housing for the Housing Corporation so that we can possibly start to address our housing deficit across the Northwest...