Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is a lot of work that needs to be done there, and if the department has been providing it in kind or through contract services or just leading the support, perhaps an internal reallocation to actually give them another staff person is long overdue, especially if we are going to meet the business plan goal of lowering that wait list. I wanted to move on to the FASD diagnostic clinic that MLA Cleveland started on. This is another one of those areas. Can I get the total budget of the FASD diagnostic clinic and whether there has been any increase to that? Thank you, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are budgeting for a full year and hoping that we do not need a full year. It would be nice if COVID was wrapped up, but a lot of that is beyond our control. Can I just get a sense of what's going to happen, say, if we wrap this up in September, use half a year's fiscal? How do we plan to make sure that the 150-or-so staff in the COVID secretariat do not simply lose their jobs? Will they be transferred back to other positions, or are they on short-term contracts? Can I just get a little update on that, how we are staffing the COVID secretariat in light of it having to...

Thank, Mr. Chair. Yes. I guess that makes sense to me. We are not going to cut off core services anytime, but we have a yearly fund of fires to supplementary appropriation, which can range from $4- to $50 million and have large fluctuations. I think probably there is some room to have that conversation later. However, I wanted to switch to, I believe this is the funding for the Office of the Public Guardian. Can I get a clarification of whether there has been an increase to the Office of the Public Guardian? I note the department has a goal of decreasing the wait list for the number of people...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am just looking at the 2020-2021 revised estimates, $31 million. We passed this in a supplementary appropriation, but I know, since that time, a number of cost-saving measures have gone on. Do we have a forecast of how much we will actually spend on the COVID secretariat this fiscal? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I understand there are some plans to run a deficit-reduction plan. Are we expecting that this main estimates that we are looking it for 2021-2022 will actually add to the deficit, or are we now budgeting enough that the deficit will essentially stop? I am not expecting us to pay off the $120 million, but is it going to get bigger this fiscal, as well? Thank you.

I am sorry to hear that the Minister has lost her individual identity. I quite like her as a person, and I was looking forward to seeing that signature. I am glad the Minister mentioned procurement because I think what has happened is that, due to the federal government being in charge of procurement on this, the GNWT has kind of stepped back on the economic recovery role, but despite numerous requests from the Giant Mine Oversight Board to have the federal government kind of understand the North and understand our labour needs, the federal government has also kind of stepped away from...

I'll try again. When I look at the department's business plan in here, there are service level metrics to be devolved. There are employee engagement and satisfaction to be devolved. There is employee turnover to measure. There is long-term care to be measured. There is employment engagement service. Fifty percent of the department is supposed to be surveyed. I have no sense of whether that work has been done or is done. I have no sense of whether this is the adequate money to do it. Perhaps, as a start, if I could get the Minister to commit to what is being done by the Department of Finance in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I understand that ENR is the project lead on the Giant Mine and is leading much of our remediation work. There is a bit of a conflict of interest when the arm of government that is responsible for oversight and regulating contaminated sites, if I also ask them to advocate on behalf of the companies to capture benefits that they are regulating, so I'd like to understand what our Indigenous ministry is doing to build a remediation economy. My first question for the Minister of ITI is: in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and our post-COVID economic recovery plan, is the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I heard the deputy minister say that we are just starting to conduct some of that staff survey work, and we are starting to roll out staff satisfaction. Do we have current staff satisfaction measures right now for the department? Thank you.

I'm very happy to hear that work is being done, and I look forward to seeing that information once it's analyzed. My main concern here is that a lot of the funding that established these programs was COVID relief funding. It's not necessarily money that has been budgeting and is found in the operations budget for Health and Social Services. Specifically, I know the Arnica program, they're hiring a manager to run this program. They are looking at best practices. However, their funding right now is COVID relief funding. My question for the Minister of Health and Social Services is: can I get a...