Rylund Johnson

Madam Speaker, the other night I was watching the news and after years of Iran failing to come to the table to negotiate a nuclear deal, I heard the lead negotiator on that file say they expected a deal within one year. And Madam Speaker, I thought let's hire that guy to settle some land claims.

Madam Speaker, the time, all across Canada in fact, not just the GNWT problem, to conclude a land claim agreement is getting longer and longer. They are becoming slower and slower to negotiate and as the time period gets longer, the number of leaders involved in each negotiating gets longer, only...

I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that Committee Report 2319(2), Report on the Review of the 20182019 and 20192020 Public Accounts, be received by the Assembly and moved into the Committee of the Whole. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The paper is on my desk.

Madam Speaker, your Standing Committee on Government Operations is pleased to provide its Report on the Review of the 201819 and 201920 Public Accounts and commends it to the House.

The Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories’ Standing Committee on Government Operations has a mandate to review the Report on the Government of the Northwest Territories’ Public Accounts. This review helps ensure that issues related to public spending the GNWT’s fiscal management practices are publicly examined and scrutinized to promote government accountability. Due to the...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I really hope there's not some engineer in the GNWT who just cringed when he was told that he concurs with the assessment. But my question here is this has happened to the GNWT multiple times, where we've opened buildings and then there's been well, in this case, a oneyear delay before the building is actually opened. Are there some sort of lessons learned? Is there a path forward to prevent us from continuing to not open our buildings or not build them to code. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I'll note that March 2022 is a full year after the Minister opened the building officially. Can someone just explain to me what is going on here? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. My questions were for the Minister of Housing but I've noticed she's stepped out. So I'm going to have an impromptu question for our Premier.

There's been some previous discussion about corporate restructuring, and I'll note that some of that discussion is centered around the departments of ENR, MACA, and Lands, who all tend to have one Minister right now. I'm just wondering if this is still on the table in the life of this Assembly, whether the Premier is going to look at corporate restructuring and how different departments are structured?

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would also appreciate any insight to whether we have updated our selfgovernment mandates. My current understanding is that there's hundreds of pages which form the selfgovernment mandate. There's a chapter on every single topic imaginable from health to education to government services. I mean, I have never seen any of this but I'm wondering if, given devolution, given the commitment to UNDRIP, whether a full rewrite of looking at all of the selfgovernment mandates is occurring or has occurred? Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. With calls across the country to return land to Indigenous governments and really at the heart of our standing land claims is a question about land. I was hoping the Premier could provide some insight.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The committee believes the GNWT can and should be a leader in the accessibility of financial reporting, and therefore recommends:

The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the comptroller general, in consultation with the Office of the Auditor General of Canada and the Standing Committee on Government Operations, study potential changes to the public accounts to make them more userfriendly and accessible while ensuring a high degree of transparency and accountability from the Government of the Northwest Territories.

This concludes the Standing...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Perhaps I can just get clarification on whether I'm supposed to move the committee report into Committee of the Whole after or before I read the report?