Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Madam Chair. We are, right now, working with the Department of Health and Social Services as well as ENR, and I think others, actually, towards a food strategy for the Northwest Territories, and a lot of work has, in fact, been done on that recently. There's been an inventory done around food security programming led by ITI, and recently, a poverty round table hosted by Health and Social Services. All of that information is being put together through an ADM working group so that all the departments, again, continue to understand what each one is doing so that we can best respond...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I suggest this might go to our director of finance, Ms. Salvador, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. No. Madam Chair, just confirming. I did certainly confirm back with the department after the discussion here in the House that there is continued interest to have some sort of a coupon once again. Hearing it on the floor of the House is an important tool that raises its profile in the department, so we are well aware, and we want to have that ready to go. As I said, again, the dates for bookings do open in May, so a bit of time, but we want the information out. I am conscious of that. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There is an increase there. That's with respect to the Mineral Resources Act implementation and also money to establish the knowledge economy and regional economic development plans.

Thank, Madam Chair. That is not inaccurate, that it is certainly a conduit to more money, and we do have metrics. I don't know if we have them with us. I know it's reported on annually, Madam Chair, and if that is agreeable, I would certainly just commit to making sure that that's available to the Member.

Madam Chair, typos are pretty rare in the main estimates. No, it's not a typo. Look, the mineral resources sector has had some pretty significant struggles over the last year and, we are expecting, likely will continue to have some pretty significant ups and downs in the year to come. The estimates in the forecast are perhaps a bit conservative, but I suspect the Minister of Finance would rather have a conservative estimate than have a wide variation in terms of the own-source revenues that we are expecting to have come in. If, in fact, the diamond markets continue to rebound, as they seem to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I assume it's the film industry rebate program and the Great Northern Arts Festival is what we're looking at now. Yes. Thank you. Madam Chair, we're definitely looking at the film industry rebate as well as the Great Northern Arts Festival. With respect to the film industry, I'm quite pleased to say that with the film strategy coming out imminently again and knowing that we have right now a fairly strong emergent film industry, of course, yes, I'm more than happy to say that we'd like to consider more money, but money does not grow on actual trees. We want to look at...

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are no plans right now to have any sort of extra assessment around the need for this unit right at the moment. However, what we are fairly confident in is that, while there may not have been a lot of oil and gas exploration, there continues to be a very large amount of interest in LNG production, distribution, marketing, et cetera, across the Northwest Territories. There is a lot of activity in the Delta, but there is activity in the South Slave, as well, interested in it both at a small scale and a large scale.

There is certainly that aspect of it, in addition to...

Yes, please, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I think the most up-to-date would be hopefully with Deputy Minister Strand.