Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this certainly is a more difficult area to decarbonize effectively, particularly long-haul trucking. Some of the more heavy equipment machinery used in mine sites, for instance, might be looking to electrify, and there's certainly some efforts to do that underway. Elsewhere, again, challenges in terms of the climate here in the North do impact the battery capacity. One of the more promising opportunities would be in renewable diesel. Once again, though, Mr. Speaker, the way that this has unfolded through Canadian approaches thus far, there's not a strong...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And it is similar in some ways to what I had just responded to, that functional zero for each community will be set by each community not for each community. In other words, it's identifying what population is able to find some form of appropriate housing appropriate to where they are at and meeting a person where they are which may mean that there's often going to remain some number of people within a community who are effectively without formal shelter or may be transitioning between shelter. But functional zero ensures that everyone has a place for where they're at...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the NGOs have been extremely valuable partners. Indeed, the camp that I mentioned earlier as a transitional opportunity wouldn't have arisen and wouldn't be possible without NGOs coming forward and making themselves and their skills available. So there's been a lot of discussions and a fairly exhaustive look at different options here in Yellowknife. It involved not only the NGO community and their facilities, at least one of which is able, with some additional funding, to expand their beds, but also looking at local developers, you know, hotels, large scale...

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to provide the Legislative Assembly with this fall economic and fiscal update. I will also use this opportunity to outline our progress towards the goals set out in our fiscal strategy.

Our work towards restoring balance through this government's fiscal strategy meant that we started the fiscal year with the GNWT's largest-ever projected operating surplus. We have been trimming longstanding unfilled public service positions, consolidating programs that were inefficiently split between departments, and identifying underspent funds that could be reduced...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents: 2025-2026 Capital estimates and Public accounts of the Government of the Northwest Territories Section II Interim Non-Consolidated Financial Statements for the Year ended March 31, 2024. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, let me say I would say not enough conversations. I hope there's more attention paid to these opportunities. It would be expectational to see this kind of funding flow to Indigenous governments here within the Northwest Territories. I know I've mentioned it in passing at Council of Leaders of meetings and in opportunities, for example sitting with colleagues at the Taltson steering committee, and department officials certainly do point their counterparts and colleagues to the 2Y2 Indigenous single window funding portal that exists with the federal government. But, again, any...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm quite pleased to talk about the clean energy investment tax credit because it is an interesting thing that there's an opportunity here for the North, for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, to be seeking this tax credit except that we have to make a nonbinding commitment to be on net-zero.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to make that commitment. I'm happy to simply make the commitment, but it certainly is going to be pretty challenging for the Northwest Territories or, frankly, probably any part of the non-connected to the North American energy grid...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is certainly not an easy one, and I want to acknowledge that from the get-go, that the efforts to deal with what became a crisis situation this summer interrupts the ability to plan for the future. And we're well aware that we need to get out of the cycle of responding to crisis in order to actually plan in a careful way to deliver the services we need.

Working towards a place where integrated case management which has become integrated service delivery can be expanded, expanded out of Yellowknife and, in fact, even expanded within Yellowknife, those...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with the encampment that took place in Yellowknife this summer, and continuing to now, there was an opportunity to engage directly with the community of individuals relying on that for sheltering, and it gave an opportunity for EIA to identify a cohort of folks who are looking for an opportunity to be in a more transitional type of shelter. And so it's with that in mind that -- and in a lot of discussions with the NGO community here who supports folks who are underhoused that they were able to identify an opportunity to use this facility that is outside of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure that it's barriers within necessarily that are preventing this. There is some -- certainly some requirement that the funds would have to be, for example, 5 percent change from the baseline of the operation which, if it was for the whole of the mine it might be easier, but when it's for a specific portion of operations that actually can turn into a fairly significant number. And another challenge being that it actually needs to have some sense of provability and not be a test or a trial or a research project. So you know, again, certainly very...