Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We hired an independent panel, and they did some really good work on procurement, and they delivered their report in June 2021. And Mr. Speaker, I somewhat naively thought that, you know, within a few months after that we'd see changes to procurement.

I reviewed their report. I thought they did good work. I didn't really disagree with any of the recommendations. They made a few recommendations to change the thresholds in BIP, increasing the top $1 million to $2 million, recommended creating a local labour adjustment, and a few other tweaks.

They recommended a new...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can someone just explain to me what's going on here with this line item? It was, last fiscal, the actuals were $18 million, and then we were advised sorry, two fiscals there was 18 then we were advised it was 66 and now it's 22. Can I just have a high level explanation of what's going on? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. You know, and I get that's the nature of these; you got to do a lot of planning work and you got to spend a few million dollars. I mean, we've been spending I think since the 16th Assembly we've been spending a few million dollars every budget on Taltson to do some engineering assessments. And I get the project is kind of evolving and it's, you know, no longer going to the diamond mines and it's relying on a bunch of metal mines. I know Pine Point in their preliminary economic assessment says they're buying power from the Taltson at 11 cents a kilowatt hour, which is very...

Yeah, that's all fine. I get the debate. I get the debate when to build it and, you know, this debate if you build it they will come. You know, I just don't understand why we can't have a rough estimate of what it's going to cost. It just doesn't it's like I'm having a debate with no idea. I don't even know what to ask next. Do we know the route yet? Did we make a decision on whether it's submarine or going around the lake? Thank you.

Can I get an over/under on $2 billion? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. In addition, in that July report, you know, it kind of just says the work to create an Indigenous Procurement Policy is ongoing, there's no kind of timeline on there. I'm wondering if we have any sense of I know that's not going to be done in in the next week, but is there any hope of us getting that done in some sort of timeline, or will we have an Indigenous Procurement Policy as a government? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I really do not like leaving things to the next Assembly. I think if you look at the last Assembly's mandate, a lot of the things that were very close, and it's clear hundreds of hours of staff time went into them and, you know, there was perhaps some last minute disagreement. Never got done. We didn't take them on. They didn't make it into our mandate. And all of that work disappeared. There's quite a few things in our mandate that I'm sure the next Assembly will let die as well. I'm hoping that the Business Incentive Policy is not one of them. So my question is for...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Member for Thebacha, that Committee Report 7019(2), Standing Committee on Government Operations Report on the Review of the 20212022 Annual Report of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, be received and adopted by the Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our mandate commits that we will develop the business case for the Taltson hydro expansion for spring 2020, Mr. Speaker. And what's notable about that is that we tabled the mandate in February 2020, and it seems to me the only reason you would essentially not give yourself any timeline to develop something is that it was already done. Yet here we are, Mr. Speaker, in fall 2023, and we have not seen the Taltson business case.

So my question for the Minister of Infrastructure, has the Taltson business case been developed? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Member for Thebacha, that Committee Report 6919(2), Standing Committee on Government Operations Report on the Review of the 2020 Audit of Early Childhood to Grade 12 Education, No. 2, be received and adopted by the Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.