Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, on the left Deputy Minister, Department of Finance, Bill MacKay. And on the right are legislative drafter, I believe, Sherry Giroque although I guess yes, she's nodding at me.. I didn't have her title with me, I apologize.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, every department certainly does have to justify if the actuals that they're incurring are significantly different from what's been budgeted. They certainly have to provide an explanation for that. But, again, it's going to be project by project and department by department because there's different reasons. And in fact, some projects have more than one reason why they may be experiencing a delay. So, you know, that matter of going through each one, I'm certainly happy to provide that further detail. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I didn't bring the mains with me either, Madam Chair. But it looks like Minister Thompson might have some information he can offer.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the vaccination requirements are not different are, again, asked please, first of all, please go get your vaccine. It's your best way to protect yourself and to then provide that.

What does change department or division by division is in fact the specific guidelines around personal protective equipment. That's to accommodate the fact that certain different workplaces will have different levels of need or different levels of potential exposure to members of the public or to one another, you know, an office environment versus a frontline environment. But all...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, at this point the studies there are studies that are being done, geotechnical, the traditional knowledge studies, there's rooting studies. There's certainly also a fairly significant amount of outreach that needs to occur with Indigenous governments and certainly some visioning in terms of how we'll be structuring relationships going forward on the project. So all of that work is underway. It's just that not all necessarily happening within the current fiscal year and so that's where some of the money that's being allocated is being moved into coming years...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, again, Madam Chair, it's not new money, it's not unanticipated money. It's not unexpected money. There's no new money. There's no new debt. It's the costs of the road and it's the cost of incurring the expenses on the road. What was different was in terms of the timing of when the expenses are showing as having been incurred based on the periodic completion leading up to today, which was always the expected date. And it takes there is a lag, you know, there is a lag in terms of when invoice's received. I've come to discover that it's at least a month by the...

Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, so the funding that was flowing through the Department of ECE to cover well, to hopefully cover the insurance costs, which it was coming close, if not not covering already, is now going to show up in Finance because Finance is responsible for administering the costs of insurance. So you may well see this number well, you will see this number again when we get to the Department of Finance. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this again is timely to have this conversation in the House. It's timely to have these questions. ECE and ITI, of course, have released the arts strategy not long ago and are indeed, as I mentioned, undertaking a review of all of the programs and the funding associated to it. So in the course of that, we can certainly commit to working together to look at whether or not there is funding that's available that's perhaps not being utilized, whether there are programs that could be better advertised to those who need it, or if in fact, there's a gap and that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm also well aware of the problem. It's certainly not new. It's been raised to our offices as well.

At present, Mr. Speaker, there are arts council grants through the Department of ECE that can be certainly directed to all artisans in the territory. The Department of ITI provides supports for hide camps, tanning camps through  generally through seed funding and funding that can go to the communities. So I anticipate that there could be more  that the Member's looking for something more, but there are some creative ways that we can support those  these...