Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the work of implementing and respecting UNDRIP and treaties is part of the day-to-day work that happens across every department and is the responsibility of every single Minister at all times. Mr. Speaker, there doesn't need to be a new line item or new money to be reflective of the honour and the oath that we've all taken, nor of the role of every government or every department vis-a-vis each community and each Indigenous government.

And, Mr. Speaker, the example I'll give is, frankly, the work of the GNWT on the action committee in order to see that we are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is an action plan that is underway. I understand that there is a target date of the fall of 2025 to have that action plan published and that work towards that is, indeed, on track. Departments are all contributing to it, working with participating Indigenous governments toward that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is the issue of residency that creates the risk that we would be concerned with respect to the mobility rights under the Constitution, so section 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms provide that all Canadian residents have mobility rights. And so it is specifically with respect to saying that persons who are living in the North or have lived in the North or have lived here for some period of time, that classification is the concern. But membership in a group that is historically disadvantaged, so this is where Indigenous Canadians and Indigenous...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the work between, I believe -- well, multiple departments and the auditor's general office of Canada went on for I want to say two years. It might have been slightly longer than that. That's fairly extensive, and I'd be happy to perhaps provide that by way of a written response. I won't do it justice here. The Department of Finance and the Office of the Comptroller General works with the Auditor General's Office of Canada on an annual basis. They prepare all of the audits for our government. And so, again, I think there was two parts to the question, and I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, Mr. Speaker, I do think that's an important point for folks to understand that there was the remediation of the space, first of all, and there's an industry term for it that's escaping me, but essentially to have it into a shell position so that it could actually be then renovated. So that's where there's two parts to what's going on. And the -- the vanilla shell, I think is the term. To have it at a vanilla shell so that it could be turned into a useful space. Again, that's not an insignificant cost and that has now been parsed out over the course of the lease...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't have that specific information. I'd be happy to get that for the Member and provide it to the House. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, when the decision was made to lease it out and to have it remediated by that leaseholder, the intention was that the leaseholder could make whatever choices initially that they wanted about what they would do with that building. Likely office space, commercial, commercial space, but not bound necessarily to turn it back into any kind of health facility. That would, of course, require the health department to be planning to go back in there and initially that was not the plan. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this, again -- more than happy to say if we want to admit wrongdoing, that looking back ten years ago we don't have all of the records that we should have in order to explain that decision. None of us were here. I wasn't here.

What I can say, Mr. Speaker, to the best of the knowledge today, at the time in 2014, the plan that health and social services was to build a new and standalone long-term care facility, and then when that project would have been ready to move forward closer, if I recall correctly, to the 2019, 2020 -- or rather 2020, the situation had...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have on my left Bill MacKay, the deputy minister of finance. And on my right, Tram Do, the director of shared corporate service.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, not as an expressed committee per se.