Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I just clarify that $649,000,000, those are the securities held by the Department of Lands, and that doesn't also include those under water licences, ENR?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Could the appropriate standing committee also be updated regarding the status of the ongoing disputes and issues and the responses to requests that have been raised by the NWT Foster Family Coalition?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I recognize the Department of Lands has a lot of work to do and there is a lot of complication in land administration. My question is: I would really like to see a land-use plans for all Indigenous governments during the life of this Assembly. Does the department have the sufficient resources to do that right now?

Ongoing dialogue is important, but I was looking for a little more from the Minister of Health and Social Services. The NWT Foster Family Coalition publicly made a number of requests. Can the Minister of Health and Social Services commit to responding to each of those requests made by the NWT Foster Family Coalition?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think I am going to rephrase that. What happened is we started the work on the Yellowknife management plan, and then the Department of Lands failed to do adequate consultation, got some resistance from Indigenous governments, and now the plan is not complete. I struggle with why the Department of Lands, which is responsible for the land in the Northwest Territories, cannot do proper consultation. My question is: when will we see the Yellowknife periphery area recreation management plan complete?

I appreciate that commitment to bring this forward to the department to look into it. The main issue with a building standards act is we all know there is a multimillion-dollar deficit in infrastructure costs to the NWT, and GNWT infrastructure is built to very high-quality standards, but, in the communities where there is no enforcement of this, every single person building a building has to decide between quality, and often we are building buildings that are the cheaper option, which means that the cost of living in our communities consistently rises. A building standards act creates an even...

Thank you, Madam Chair. If we transfer the land in fee simple, and then it's not complying with a community bylaw, those bylaws still apply, and it's the responsibility of the community to deal with that. This issue of, you know, "If it's there's not financial compliance," but we're actually spending millions of dollars a year trying to get people in compliance, many of whom are Indigenous rights holders. There is a lot of complexity here that I believe the Department of Lands needs to take a better look at.

I would like to move on, though. In my riding of Yellowknife North, we have already...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the commitment to update the Extraordinary Funding Policy, but I don't think this is the place for the NWT SPCA to ever fit. I recognize that the heart of what the SPCA in Yellowknife is doing is municipal, but there is this issue: the SPCA also travels to communities and provides vaccines; they do spay and neuter clinics. This idea that they are not doing territorial work is a misunderstanding of the importance of animal health. A single dog attack in a community, when we throw in the medical travel, costs us more than the SPCA would need to go and do the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I see there is not much of a change in the budget for corporate communications, but I have some questions, if we are changing the way corporate communications is done at all. I think one of the biggest criticisms of the last government, and the reason many of us are here, is that there was a communication breakdown, both between Members and with the public. I would say, to date, that we’ve been losing the communication battle in the media and with the public, and some of the great work we’re doing here is not necessarily being conveyed. My question to the Premier is...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I look forward to seeing that policy, and I hope it is implemented sooner rather than later. Jumping to the larger questions, we have UNDRIP implementation in our mandate. I've asked a number of questions on this. I guess I see that there is the intention to form a working group to implement UNDRIP, but perhaps I could ask the Premier to provide an update of how we are making sure that all departments are involved in this and that all government policies and legislation will be updated as a result of the wide breadth of coverage that is UNDRIP?