Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Chair. Our report was previously read into the record so I don't have any substantive comments to add to the report; however, individual Members may have comments on the report and its recommendations. I'd just like to thank the committee for their commitment and hard work on this report.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was hoping I could just get a little bit more detail on the money being spent on the Slave Geological Province Corridor. I understand we spent $2.8 million this year, and we're moving $6.5 million forward. I get this is do we have an estimate of the total cost to get this planning work done? And I believe some of this is also for the potential environmental review. Can I just get a little bit more detail on what we expect the planning and environmental costs to be. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That is the fact that I needed to click here. We are adjusting what was done in 2021, we have already approved the main estimates which get us to $1.5 billion. That's adding another $300 million, leaving us about $300 million in our debt cap. I believe I just stated that correctly.

Can I just get an update from the Minister of Finance? I believe during her budget address, there was talk about unsustainability and that current projections project us hitting our debt cap of $1.8 billion just at the end of this Assembly. Is that still the case? Does this change any of...

No further questions on that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Perhaps I can just get the Minister of I guess I don't have a lot of issue with adding $10 million more to our massive debt, but I see here that the total government borrowing is $1.19 I'm going to call it just $1.2 billion. I actually thought we were higher than that because I know we were approaching the $1.3 billion cap, and now we got extended to $1.8 billion.

But I can just clarify that by the end of this fiscal, this is what that borrowing limit actually is; there's not some other number that it's different from the imposed cap. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, I believe me and the Minister, we're going to get through this. We've had a number of conversations, and I previously asked whether the department was willing to change the guidelines that the Office of the Fire Marshal operates under to review draft documents first. And I want to clarify what I'm asking for here.

I'm not asking for a final occupancy permit or a final signoff on draft documents. That would be very inappropriate. But during building a building, the architects, the engineers, and the contractors all get together, they move around the plans, and...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm happy to seeing the half million dollars of completely federal money to support long-term care. I remember when this was announced, there was some this was kind of going on across the country. There were outbreaks in long-term care and so a number of deals were signed. Can I just get a bit of a explanation of what this money has been spent on to mitigate risk in longterm care settings during the pandemic? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, I'll put the Minister on Housing that I on notice that I will ask her when she expects the GNWT to let the GNWT open their building.

My question here is that I regularly see receive complaints that our Office of the Fire Marshal is not operating with the same service that both of our neighboring territories are, that emails go unresponded to, that plan review function takes months, that getting occupancy permits can take months and months with different dates provided. Is the Minister willing to create some sort of a standards for the Office of the Fire Marshal...

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I recall there's kind of a saying that says we always got to keep some money in the bank because a bad forest fire season can cost us $50 million, and then we got the sup for $40 million for fire suppression, and now we're seeing another $1.2 million in what I don't think was a particularly bad year.

I have a question of how much are we budgeting to kind of keep in reserve for forest fire seasons going forward? And I know this is kind of one of those hard questions where we don't know. But do we have a general average of what we now expect to see every year for...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My first question for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs is does the department have a backlog of legislation?