Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I want to ask, can the Minister speak to work being done to make that process easier. I am afraid that we are likely to lose this route with the current council, given their track record, and perhaps there's a way to pull some ropes. I just would welcome the political insights that's happening to make sure that that application development permit is a little smoother. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I see there's the continued funding for the wellness and recovery centre in Yellowknife. This has been in the capital budget a couple years now. But can I just get an update on that project and when we expect construction to start. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just trying to understand how the gap works. So say, I'm going to use Yellowknife as an example because then I'm not getting into a debate about communities.

If Yellowknife builds a new pool, that increases the needs for their capital. So does that then mean we adjust the formula and they are then required to new money, or is it just based on a per capita kind of design, or does it actually depend on what has been built in the community? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I'm glad I know there's a kind of a couple different systems operating and they don't always speak to each other the best, so I think this is a good opportunity, although it will probably be a very, very expensive one, to look at all of our systems.

As part of that project team looking at this, is it on their agenda a patient online portal. COVID has really pushed this to the forefront, and in many jurisdictions you can log in and you can just see all of your vaccination statuses. You can see outstanding lab test. And you know if we had something like that during...

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I'm wondering if the Minister can provide a little bit more on the needs assessment. I get some of the point of conflict is based on these kind of arguments of well, you can go get, you know, federal money for that, or perhaps you don't need a brand new pool, or you know, things like that. Can the Minister just speak to work we're doing to kind of reevaluate what proper infrastructure looks like for a community.

I guess in the larger context, this is a very big conversation happening across Canada. Most of our municipalities are in just terrible fiscal...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe this is a number of things the department is doing to provide further virtual care to our residents. I just want to thank the Minister for bringing this forward.

During COVID, we made many steps in this direction, and now there seems to be a bit of a catchup to change some of the regulations, adopt the software, and really be a leader in this area. So I will gladly support this bill on second reading.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I recognize there's some work being done to revisit the formula, which will then give us a new number, but I'm wondering right now what we quantify the gap being. I know we have a mandate commitment to reduce it by $5 million. I know we've made a lot of progress on the operations side and some on the environmental. I believe this is the largest part of the municipal funding gap according to the current formula we've agreed to. Can I just get a numerical figure of how short it is right now?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm happy to see we're extending fibre along the highway to Tuk. I think as has been stated previously, I think every time we build a road it's good to extend the fibre line as well along with it.

Can I just get clarification. Who will own this fibre line at the end? Will this be wrapped into the entire Mackenzie Valley P3, or is this to be owned by Northwestel? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think online map staking is long overdue. Can I just get an estimated idea of when we expect that to exist in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm looking here at a $500 million capital budget, and I think the question we all need to ask ourselves is how are we going to pay for this?

We know our fiscal responsibility policy allows us to pay for 50 percent of this with debt and based on all of the previous public accounts, it's quite likely that 50 percent of this will be paid for by debt.

It's worth noting that about $200 million of this is federal dollars. I think that fact is important because it shows that we are still largely driven by federal priorities. But also the allure of 75-cent dollars is largely a...