Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, so there were some challenges I understand in terms of the staffing at the Status of Women over the last several months, and the gender equity unit was able to provide some supports during that period of time. It is the board of the Status of Women that does do their own hiring and does manage their own human resources process. So the role that I would have on behalf of the GNWT, as the Minister responsible for Status of Women, is to appoint the board and then they do their own hiring. So I certainly can reach out to them for an update as to where they're...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, so I mean, as I've said, I think, through the last round of questions, I certainly in general would be happy to see more uses of the parks and more tourism opportunities. The challenge is ensuring that the contractors who run the parks are available, firstly, and it may not that they are prepared to undertake whatever the asks are. And there then has to be sufficient occupancy and incoming revenue to make some business case for it. And it probably will not fully offset the costs to the department to keep the parks open. But if it could at least come close...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am also aware of the appointments to the CRTC insofar as they are known on the internet. The federal government does not have an obligation to come to me with respect to their decisions over who they appoint. They are appointments done by the Canadian heritage minister, federal Canadian heritage minister so, again, they're fiveyear appointments. It may well be that it's an opportunity to put forward some names if people in the Northwest Territories are interested in this area. I would certainly be interested in hearing from them or hearing about them...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the Intergovernmental Council has been a codevelopment partner of the Mineral Resources Act regulations. They have sat at the table handinhand with ITI in terms of getting to where we are at this point. And notwithstanding, I know perhaps not the view of every Member in this House, the industry partners out there are often quite critical of the fact that they feel that they haven't had the opportunity to have as much input as they want. So it seems like you can't always make everybody happy. But in this case, we have taken the legislative protocol that...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, if there is an operator in the North Slave area that is interested in running winter camping, we would love to hear from them. There is going to be a whole list of funding opportunities that I'll be sharing with MLAs after today to give opportunity for potential operators to access funds to open their winter camping opportunity. The costs to the department, when we ran just two extra weeks back in 2020, was well over $200,000 and largely because of the costs of the contractors. Now that is across all of the regions that were participating in that pilot back...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, to be clear, I do not have any reins when it comes to telecommunications. There's a little thing called a constitution and the jurisdiction over this is exclusively with the federal government. That said, Mr. Speaker, under the Department of Finance, we do have the Office of the Chief Information Officer. The OCIO does represent us with respect to northern interests on internet broadband. And we were able to get a bit of information and some support with respect to telecommunications radio or rather with radio broadcasting. So in that regard, while this...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So there is a procurement review underway, still right now, that was begun some time ago and a fairly detailed set of recommendations received some time ago. It is now at a stage where there are a number of changes that have been made and some more changes coming forward to the public side of the procurement work that the government is doing. Things, for example, around just clarifying, you know, how bids are being received, trying to ensure that it's more that, you know, venders are being monitored for ensuring that they actually follow through with whatever their...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I would certainly be happy to provide a list to committee of all the tourism funding available. There are quite a number of pots. I do have a detailed note here that lists them all with the amounts, and that probably is the most effective way of putting that forward. And I would just otherwise give one quick note which is to say CanNor does often come in, and we are able to work with them when there's particular funding shortages for communities or to connect communities directly to CanNor so they can go to them. So wouldn't want to not give them that thank...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, happy I mean, the ideas, I couldn't agree more with. Happy to have the ideas. Exactly who the champion might be and then connecting the champions to the funding is, I suppose, the more challenging side. That said, I would note that there is now funding for interpretive programming within parks, which is new. That is an asset I have heard here. And there's now $50,000 per year proposed to support interpretive programming which hopefully would I mean, I'd love to see that be fully expended this year. It certainly would give that valueadd about the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, look, I can convey just briefly a conversation I had actually with the executive director at that same conference which is which some of the products that they are putting out and looking at the entire food value chain from growing to production. You know, I actually asked, why are we not having more foodie tours? I had much the same reaction to be quite honest, given the wealth and the variety of things available in the North, a lot of them very unique and gourmet forging. So I completely agree. NWT Tourism was represented at the agrigrow conference that...