Steve Norn

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thought I was going to do this tomorrow, but I will do this now. I would like to table the medical travel expense claim form for the record. Mahsi cho.

My apologies. I will just repeat myself here again. The form here says, four to six weeks in its current state. With the new implementation of SAM, is this going to be in addition to the four to six weeks on top of this that claimants will have to wait? Another 30 days?

Thank you for the response from the Minister. Again, not quite what I wanted to hear, but at least I am glad she is open to some dialogue to listen to my suggestions. I do have some suggestions, but that will be for another time. You did mention a new accounting software. I believe that she is referring to SAM that a lot of departments are moving on towards. I know that a lot of my constituents are complaining about some of the delays that are happening with this new software. With this new transition, how long can the current claimants expect to wait for their claims to be reimbursed?

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Today, I would like to speak about medical travel services with the Department of Health and Social Services. It seems that medical travel is quickly becoming one of the top issues that my constituents have to deal with. I am constantly, almost on a daily basis, hearing from constituents about various issues they have experienced in regard to medical travel. Among the issues I have seen, there seems to be confusion about the filing of paperwork; it is too complicated. The reimbursement of claims taking excessive amounts of time to be returned to residents; and, of...

I am happy to see this news. I am hoping it is done in a very constructive way. Yeah, it is good to hear about the endowment fund. Hopefully, we see something like that. I guess my final comment is, if I ever win the lottery, I will chip in a little bit into that. That is all I have.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just looking at the question, I'll make some comments about economic diversification. This section here says what we will do. It says we will work with Indigenous and community governments to identify and advance economic opportunities.

One of the things that I ask myself is, our local and our Indigenous businesses, they don't have the capacity to move ahead. There are a lot of barriers, like right now in terms of business. What I mean by that is there are barriers in terms of BIP and the P3 strategy. I did some research on this. There are jurisdictions, i.e., the U.S...

Thank you for the response. You mentioned a little bit about monitoring. I guess my question is: does ENR have any funds earmarked for environmental monitoring as part of this transboundary water agreement?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't think I will get the same magic that my previous colleague just got, but I will give it a shot. My questions are to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. It goes to my comments earlier from my Member's statement on the Teck decision to withdraw.

I want to speak a little bit about the transboundary water agreement with NWT and Alberta. I really thought about this for the last couple of days. I was really surprised at the amount of silence we had from that end of the Chamber. It concerned me because I know that if we had a large project in the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the response from the Minister. My concern is, and somebody has already echoed today, that my money is leaving the North. I just feel right now, I'm hoping within the life of this Assembly that we will see changes for our local and our northern and our Indigenous businesses, and have something real to show for it because right now, it's not working out that way, and I'm hoping we go in that direction. That's just a comment, not a question.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Committee wishes to consider Tabled Document 12-19(2), 2019-2023 Mandate of the Government of the Northwest Territories.