Rylund Johnson

Thank you. You know, I think we started the DIIMS project about a decade ago. Can I just confirm if everybody is now on DIIMS? Thank you.

I've got some more rabies questions, Mr. Speaker. So once we move on to wildlife, we get to pets. And dogs is actually the number one way that humans can contract rabies. In many jurisdictions, it's actually required that all dog owners have uptodate vaccinations for their dogs for the rabies. That is not currently the case in the Northwest Territories. So my question for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs is whether he will consider mandating that every pet owner, every dog owner make sure that their dog has the rabies vaccine. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And then I guess there is, you know, there is to me, there's the goal of reporting on the quality and condition and all the work that we're doing with all the assets everywhere that we own, the multibillion dollars worth, and then I'm wondering if the dashboard would speak to kind of tracking ongoing infrastructure projects or whether that would be another initiative. What I picture is, you know, we often pass these capital estimates and they and some community says they're going to get a small local project done and then it gets carried over and carried over and it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My first set of questions is for ENR. I'm going to start with the foxes, Mr. Speaker. That's where the rabies are most present, and then they get into dogs, and then they get into humans. So can the Minister of ENR just tell us whether the department is presently concerned with their rabies outbreak in the current fox Arctic Fox population. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I promise I'm only going to try and only talk for about ten minutes this whole main estimates review, and all of it's going to be about asset management. And I know this section's called asset management but I guess more in regards to all of the assets in the department.

Last earlier in this session, the Minister gave an update on road construction and she said there was, you know, $45 million improving our highways and bridges and 160 kilometres of chip seal. And as she was giving that statement, I tried to look through previous, you know, main estimates and the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Northwest Territories, unfortunately, is having a banner year for rabies and, unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, last year was also a banner year for rabies. And there's a couple of reasons for this. One is it's cyclical in the Arctic fox population so it tends to spike. The other reason is that with changes in climate and warmer weather, rabies outbreaks are becoming more and more common. And, Mr. Speaker, it's worth noting that rabies is one of those public health campaigns of the 20th century that we largely solved. There are still 60,000 human deaths a year from rabies...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Northwest Territories create a law that requires all carbon tax revenues to be rebated to households, business community, businesses, community governments, Indigenous governments, and nongovernmental organizations.

And further, in creating this law, the government should consider how rebates to each group will work and whether the carbon tax system should be revenue neutral.

And furthermore, this law should also require a separate accounting and annual reporting. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yeah, thank you. You know, I get we're probably not going to finish everything up. But can someone just explain to me I mean, there's certain positions where clearly or it seems to me come April 1 you absolutely have to decide, you know, who is the superintendent in a region. To just have two people saying they are this regional superintendent for ECC seems a recipe for disaster. So, you know, how can someone just explain to me how we decide that? Is it a public competition, do we does the deputy minister and the Minister appoint one of the two? Could anyone, in theory, apply; I just want...

Thank you, Madam Chair. When can we expect to see an organizational chart for the new department? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know what, I'm actually glad to hear that. I think we're getting into semantics. When people say end homelessness, they mean that when you go out and count the people on the street, they haven't been chronically homeless usually for a period of about three months. You know, you want to try and get someone back into housing in some sort of form, whether it's transitional, in three months. So I don't want to get into semantics of what ending homelessness does as long as we're somewhat in the same ballpark.

My real question my next question, though, Mr. Speaker...