Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And Mr. Speaker, I should say thank you to the MLAs from the region who invited us there and invited me to attend and helped arrange some of the meetings that we had. It definitely it helps myself, it helps the department to have that hands on and have eyes on. You know, I my own I'm certainly not an expert so I'm hesitant to conclude that it is inevitable which businesses will or will not be experiencing impacts beyond what's available in the Disaster Assistance Policy. I mean, I can certainly say that there is, you know, some of the businesses were essentially...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to present to the House Bill 53, An Act to Amend the Liquor Act, to be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to tabling the following three documents: Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 20222023; Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 1, 20222023; and Resident Readiness Strategy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity to look back at the manufacturing strategy and also with looking at that in the context of the procurement panel's review. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that is being recommended in the panel, by the procurement panel was, of course, to have a more integrated and consolidated policy to which the northern manufacturing policy would also then be part of. So to the extent that we are right now at a critical point in that process, having done obviously the public review process, now also an Indigenous government engagement and consultation...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm glad to have an opportunity to speak about this. Certainly, we're going into the fall session and getting ready on capital planning.

During the public review process, there was some Indigenous governments who had chose to not partake in that process and instead we've been engaging more directly with them in terms of the Modern Treaty SelfGovernment tables, Council of Leaders tables, in order to ensure that all Indigenous governments here within the Northwest Territories are properly involved in this process. So that process is now complete. There was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, so if anyone's wondering perhaps why as Minister of Finance I'm speaking to this is the Member and I have had the opportunity to begin these discussions back at the time of the last budgeting cycle and in discussing where and how funding decisions are made. I've since had an opportunity, and continue to have the opportunity, to meet with the Minister responsible for Housing NWT. It's her staff directly who had met with the members from the Salt River First Nation, the chief, the vicepresident I understand, or CEO. I understand that happened April 12th or...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I've had the opportunity also to speak with my colleague, the Minister responsible for Housing and for Homelessness.

Mr. Speaker, this is a mandate item of the Government of the Northwest Territories. I would venture to say that every person in this House considers it a priority and considers it a priority for every resident anywhere in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I want to speak a bit about the opportunity I had to be on the committee. I was very grateful to be on the committee. It was an honour to be on with this committee dealing with this topic. It was an interesting I mean, I'm new to the Assembly, this is my first time here, but it was clear even so that this was something being done very differently to have both Members of Cabinet and other and MLAs all on one committee working together figuring out the process by which we would do that. So it wasn't just about what, you know, Cabinet would do, or what Ministers...

In favour.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, contract reporting is already being improved. The dashboard that I mentioned just a couple of responses ago has just gone live this month so I can appreciate that stakeholders, businesses, may not necessarily be familiar with it yet. Certainly, you know, I encourage them to go and look at that as a resource. It's an opportunity to get more information out and to get it out in one place. But, Mr. Speaker, the real core of what I'm hearing in the last question around frustration, you know, I think everyone understands, and can probably share some of the...