Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we don't monitor who is in fact vaccinated or not. What we are monitoring, Mr. Speaker, is individuals who have had their proof of vaccination documentation verified. So what employees in the GNWT will do, they go to the HR website and upload their proof of vaccine and it takes, you know, 24 or so hours for someone to simply review that and verify it, and then they're marked as having had that submitted and been verified. It's fairly quick. And I do have the numbers in terms, I think of a few days ago, of how many in total and by department have done that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am not going to speak to the timeliness of the point of privilege; I don't think that's at issue. I wish to speak to really whether or not this is prima facie point of privilege which means, in other words, whether or not on its face what's been raised is such that it would obviously or clearly amount to a breach of the privileges of the House.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to speak first to the allegation of threats that was made against public servants and, secondly, to the allegations of the threat made against all Members offence the...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following five documents: Capital Estimates 2022-2023; Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures) No. 2, 2021-2022; Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures) No. 2, 2021-2022; GNWT Response to Motion 37-19(2): Creation of a Northwest Territories Food Security Strategy; and a Follow-Up Letter for Oral Question 500-19(2): Governmental Renewal Initiative. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, right now the reason that the Northwest Territories continues to be a part of FFMC, it provides a stable and consistent floor for fishers to receive a price for their fish. It provides them a stable paycheque. And that's not a small thing in what is a -- what can be a very challenging industry.

But that said, it's a floor. And it's not necessarily one that markets the product to the extent that we believe it can be and should be and certainly doesn't get that high value for some of these side products that we also recognize that there are markets for.

So...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I certainly was listening earlier to the Member's statement to the concern that the process is unwieldy and difficult. It is not a GNWT process, Mr. Speaker. It is a process governed by the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation to which we're a member. But it is not unfortunately, a process that I can directly change. We have offered support in the past. And I've not had anything raised to me until now that there's been any delays. So we're going to keep an eye on that. I'll certainly make inquiries to see if, in fact, there's been other delays. And if so...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, firstly, just the Northwest Territories Power Corporation has its own policies so I'm not in a position to speak to what efforts they may or may not have done on their end.

With respect to the GNWT's policy, we certainly did consider the cost mainly in the form, obviously, of the PPE but particularly of testing. I anticipate the costs of PPE, we're not expecting that to be significant. But certainly the cost of tests can grow to be more significant over time. We do have some estimates. There's ranges of low to high. It depends obviously on what number of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, those communications have gone out in a variety of forms. At this point, our website is currently up to date explaining the policy and has a fairly detailed Q and A on it.

One of the next steps though, Mr. Speaker, and I expect it will be out this week, if not early this week, is that each department was asked to look at their specific work site and provide a determination of what appropriate PPE might be. Everyone's individual work site certainly will have individual requirements that allow them to operate safely if the worker is choosing not to submit...

Mr. Speaker, there's no place for retaliation in the human resources processes of the  in the Government of the Northwest Territories. I believe that my office is very accessible, and I hope that it is. I've had many MLAs reach out to me and individuals who often felt that they wanted to raise a concern that they couldn't raise somewhere else. I hope that that continues. There is no place for retaliation. There's no place for that kind of favoritism. And if there's an opportunity to speak to someone to work through something to identify an issue to confirm if there's been something that's not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't have the complete history of all hiring. I can say in 20172018, and I suspect the Member has this information already, as it went through to the last committee review. But that it was at around 1 percent and that 20182019, again, that it was five of 71 where the appeals were upheld. As far whether those individuals go on to get employment or choose to get employment or choose to seek further employment with the government, I can't say. That's not necessarily a stat that would even be possible to garner, again not knowing whether or not the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, an unsuccessful candidate eligible for appeal is able  would be provided with the staffing appeals information guide, the staffing appeals brochure, and the staffing appeals application. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to note while I wasn't here back in 2018, at the time then standing committee had provided some recommendations to the Department of Finance to improve those materials, and I understand in some inquiries here that indeed some materials have been made more plain language and there has been an effort to at least  to improve the nature of the...