Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it certainly is disheartening to think that after all that work, the hides would be sold at a deflated price. They are in high demand. I've certainly heard that is a barrier to some of our artisans as well.

At present, Mr. Speaker, in conjunction with my colleague from ECE, there is a review taking place, this fiscal into next, around all of the arts funding programs, certainly wanting to ensure that we are understanding where our money is going and understanding if there are gaps that we should be filling. Of course, alongside that there is the much bigger...

Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories is committed to improving Indigenous representation in the public service, and ensuring Indigenous employees are genuinely included, celebrated, and given opportunities to succeed. We are committed to creating a public service that is welcoming, culturally competent, and free of discrimination; one that serves in a way that respects and includes the Indigenous peoples and communities of this territory.

Today, I am pleased to announce that the Department of Finance is launching the Indigenous Recruitment and Retention Framework and Action...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I have enough responsibility but. But, Mr. Speaker, so various forms of this question have been asked I think through the week and, again, I want to ensure colleagues in the room, but particularly the public service, that we do take it very seriously well, two things we take very seriously is first of all the collective agreement and our relationship with the union, which means whatever we're doing in this front certainly needs to involve engagement with the union before we make any policy changes or any proposed changes that would impact on those processes which are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Employee Engagement Satisfaction Survey is actually done roughly every two years, and it was postponed when there was collective bargaining back in 2018 and then postponed with COVID19 so it is actually a regularly done survey.

As for what has been done with it in the past, this is the first one that's coming to me so I can't speak to what may or may not have happened to it in the past, but it's the first one that I'm going to see. And Mr. Speaker, Minister Green and myself have met already before the current crisis facing the obstetrics unit. We have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I mean, one of the major first steps of course of having that workshop, bringing folks together, and now developing and working through the creation of a form of an action plan with public engagement throughout that process. It's certainly been my practice to ask that we continue to go back out to public, to stakeholders, to interested parties throughout many and most if not most or all of the files I'm certainly responsible for. This will be no different.

When we're doing that, that's the time to be asking what analyses are necessary, what steps can be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, Mr. Speaker, this  whether it's a 'what we heard' or a workshop report, I sometimes don't like to get stuck in the semantics. We're going to have a report of the workshop. We're going to get it out to the public. It's going to outline some of the ideas that we heard from NRCan, Canada, the Government of Alberta, CanNor, the Tlicho government, Det’on Cho, the University of Alberta, Lakehead University, so very much looking forward to getting that out. And, yeah, most certainly. Again, whatever type of title we give this report, that's meant to be a guide so we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the COVID money that was received from the federal government wasn't necessarily allocated for employees or staffing or specific to, you know, hazard pay or anything of the sort. There was a number of different very specific pots that we received funding under. I mean, this is what helped pay for our waste water sampling program. This is what helped pay for isolation centre costs. And we've certainly reported on those costs throughout the course of the pandemic. I will commit to getting another update to the House on where the costs have been incurred and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I sincerely hope that any public servant right now who is tired and exhausted and stressed is not going to stop taking the leave that they need to take. The fact that we're in a crisis right now in terms of the numbers of staffing at Stanton Hospital is not the fault of the staff and I do want them to continue to take their leave. They need to take their leave. The crisis we're in started long before this month and long before last month and, frankly, probably as a result of the fact that people are burnt out and they do need their time. So this is not the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can do better than a 'yes', I can say that we've already done that. So, and I'm happy to continue those meetings, Mr. Speaker. I'm not totally surprised at the announcement that came yesterday. We don't necessarily always know but I certainly had a sense that that might be a direction that these parties might be going. I was thrilled to see it. I think that's a good move for the Northwest Territories. I am excited to see what will come with it and always happy to know if there's an opportunity for the government to participate in projects such as this one...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories has not suggested that we're going to mine our way out of the climate crisis. In fact the responsibility for climate change, that the climate change action plan sits with my colleague behind me but all of the departments, the LNR department, Lands and Natural Resources and ITI, we are working together collectively to see what opportunities we have to be part of adapting to climate change, responding to climate change, and that's really where the critical minerals part fits in for us, is that it's an opportunity...