Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, you know, would be remiss not to acknowledge that, of course, the Department of ECE has a shared responsibility over the arts. With respect to ecommerce, I can say that the challenge here  one of the challenges here, far apart from the technology alone, is, of course, then are we at risk of displacing those who may not wish to be part of the GNWT process? Would we be at risk where we are creating a situation where we're influencing or, you know, creating a market place that isn't fully fair and accessible to all? So there are some challenges in an online...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, of course we sort of shed our past lives a little bit as Ministers. So, you know  but I can speak to the issue from the perspective as a Minister responsible for the Status of Women. And certainly I know the Member appreciates, this is an area that it involves obviously the Minister of Justice. It would involve potentially Health and Social Services as they do work with women's shelters as well as other ministries across the government.

The challenge with a proposal such as a Clare's Law, which certainly could well fall within my responsibility to promote...

Mr. Speaker, you've seen nothing yet in my capacity to speak. Now I get to talk about arts.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to art sales and art sales tracking, so at the moment I can say art sales aren't tracked by the NWT Arts Program in terms of the dollar value per sales or number of sales had. Again, you know, again, this is one where there's a number of individual artists across the Northwest Territories, some in collectives, some selling on their own, some selling, I know, under various social media channel.

And this is not an opportunity, this is not an area where the government is able to...

Mr. Speaker, today's mineral resource industry in the NWT is innovative, collaborative, environmentally conscious, and has the highest standards of safety. It collaborates with the GNWT and with Indigenous communities to enhance resources for capacity building and supports Indigenous participation in, and benefits received from, the mining industry.

The resource sector directly employs over 3,000 people in the Northwest Territories and contributes over $800 million in spending each year. It accounts for nearly a third of the Northwest Territories' gross domestic product. A healthy and vibrant...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, just by way of preface, there's still a lot of work to be done in terms of any kind of design, the final design, which could look a variety of different ways. But in short, the main access, or the main interest area, indeed, is to create a fish collection station so that fishers can offload from the lake and have it shipped down to the, but then, hopefully, constructed plant in Hay River. And as such, this will be one of the associated sites that fishers around the lake can be attending. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It's confirmed to me that the 75,000 is expected to be in fact ongoing.

Madam Chair, there are department staff watching these proceedings, and I think the comments will be well taken. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My understanding of the system is that it's the disaster assistance committee that has the ability to make the final decisions on that. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think as I said at the beginning, this is an industry that contributes one third of the GDP of the Northwest Territories, over 1300 direct jobs in 2019, not to mention indirect jobs, over $813 million is spent in procurement. That's supporting all the other industries. If the Department of ITI wasn't having regular meetings with the industry representation, I would be facing very difficult questions in the House to explain why we aren't. There are regular working group meetings with the fisheries sector right now. I have regular meetings with Northwest...

Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair.