Rocky Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, once again, I want to talk about affirmative action, an initiative that was put in place to ensure the GNWT public sector would be representative of the population it serves. We know that over the past 35 plus years, little has changed when we look at percentages of Indigenous Aboriginal people employed in the public sector.

Mr. Speaker, the current affirmative action policy has specific groupings of priority hires, more specifically, Priority 1, 2, and 3 candidates, with priority 1 being specific to Indigenous Aboriginal persons. The current policy defines...

(audio) they are for weights. I know that Deline was probably a little bit behind there, and I'm just wondering if fuel is getting into communities, how the roads are holding up as well up the valley? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I guess on the news the premier said of Alberta said it wasn't, you know, their responsibility, and it was up to Imperial to notify the parties that might be you know, that are looking at damages. But the one thing I guess with this dispute mechanism, you know, we're doing extra probably testing hopefully. Is there a cost an extra cost related to this now, and would that dispute mechanism allow for those costs to be picked up by the Alberta government or Imperial? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, you know, I guess the topic of water is very important. You know, the Mackenzie River basin I think counts for about has a drainage area of about 1.8 million square miles, which is about 20 percent of Canada's land mass. And you know, it all comes down, you know, funneling through this area. And, you know, as we see more development in south, the bigger the impact could be. And, you know, with the Kearl spill, for some reason we missed it. Partly because, I guess, we weren't informed by the Alberta government. And secondly, I'm not sure if anybody was...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to talk a bit about the, I guess, water research and monitoring. And, you know, after a couple years of flooding here, how much additional work is going into that to monitor, like, especially for Hay River and the Hay River watershed, are we doing any extra work so that we can, you know, get some idea whether and somewhat predict, I guess, whether we may see flooding? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I guess on the news the premier said of Alberta said it wasn't, you know, their responsibility, and it was up to Imperial to notify the parties that might be you know, that are looking at damages. But the one thing I guess with this dispute mechanism, you know, we're doing extra probably testing hopefully. Is there a cost an extra cost related to this now, and would that dispute mechanism allow for those costs to be picked up by the Alberta government or Imperial? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, you know, I guess the topic of water is very important. You know, the Mackenzie River basin I think counts for about has a drainage area of about 1.8 million square miles, which is about 20 percent of Canada's land mass. And you know, it all comes down, you know, funneling through this area. And, you know, as we see more development in south, the bigger the impact could be. And, you know, with the Kearl spill, for some reason we missed it. Partly because, I guess, we weren't informed by the Alberta government. And secondly, I'm not sure if anybody...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Thursday, March 9th, 2023, I will move the following motion:

I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Nahendeh, that when this House adjourns on Thursday, March 9th, 2023, it shall be adjourned until Monday, March 27th, 2023;

And furthermore, that at any time prior to March 27th, 2023, if the Speaker is satisfied, after consultation with the Executive Council and Members of the Legislative Assembly, that the public interest requires that the House should meet at an earlier time during the adjournment, or at a time later than the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This question, I know, the Minister will be able to answer because we just had a chat about it yesterday.

Is the Minister willing to have the department cost out an upgrade to electrical panels in existing units that would allow for use of small generators to power the houses during an outage? So it's a matter of flipping a switch and plugging in our little Honda generator or whatever you have. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you I guess, you've identified some criteria there, but I can you expand on that bit because, you know, we talk about, you know, volume of snow; we may have some rain down south; we have cold weather possibly that could impact it; we might have you know, you say that with ice we you know, it makes it difficult to predict as well but, you know, if it it just depends what the weather's like we could have thicker ice. If we don't have a lot of snow, that could cause that as well. We have, you know, in the Hay River for instance, we got the mouth of the river and...