Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is the appropriation of the federal dollars. So any time the federal government signs an agreement or provides funding to the Government of the Northwest Territories, we still have to come forward even if we are, you know, open to signing the agreement, we still have to come forward to the Legislative Assembly to actually appropriate that money so that it can then go to the department. I mean, it goes back to the earlier conversation about shortterm debt. Until the money gets appropriated in, you know, we have to come here formally and make an adjustment to the main...

Yes, I believe that's correct. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So this is money that is coming in under the requirement or to fulfill the requirements under the AlbertaNorthwest Territories Bilateral Water Management Agreement. It's a cost shared agreement between the two, and it's meant to provide water management support for the Mackenzie River Basin. That's an agreement that was signed back in 2015. It commits both governments to cooperate in terms of the management of water resources, facilitate the monitoring of the water. Obviously, it moves across the border fluidly, and reporting of upstream effects that may occur, if there...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, it's not an increase per se to the benefit itself. Just to be clear. It's an increase to the amount that's required to cover the medical travel benefits. So medical travel assistance, it's a benefit that a number of corporations and companies and businesses provide to employees. It's one that the Government of the Northwest Territories provides to our employees, to public servants. It is part of the collective agreement with the Union of Northern Workers as well as with NWTTA and is provided as well for excluded employees, senior managers. As such, when there...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I'm inclined to get back to the Members. I'm looking at the material I have in front of me and this is not I don't obviously have the programming area specifics, and I don't want to misstate what exactly is being increased so I don't want to also conflate the fact that bound up in here is the fact that there's an end coming change on March 1st. So I'd like to take that one back and just make sure I can get a better explanation than what I have done so far of exactly what this is for. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So the I believe the new positions that we are going to have coming in sorry, let me just take actually, let hand it to Mr. Courtoreille, please.

Mr. Speaker, I think that's an excellent question for this House. It certainly traditionally hasn't been something that's been widely considered or widely discussed in the Northwest Territories. But the reality is we have over 20 different energy grids scattered across the territories. We're not linked into the North American energy infrastructure. And it may well be that the future of nuclear, as it's proving to develop and if it's proving to be safe, could well be a direction that the Northwest Territories wishes to go, that communities want to go. And so that certainly is a conversation...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So the agreements themselves are agreements with the federal government so the degree to which the agreement itself can be made public would be subject to what is in the specific clauses of the agreement, and they're federal government agreements that we are signing on to. So I anticipate that the agreement document itself probably has a clause in it that does not make it a public document. All that said, in terms of, as I said, you know, what numbers are subject to which ones are new agreements, which ones had carryovers, there certainly is some that can some details...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I don't know if the process is if it's formally closed or not. I know that there were there was a suggestion that each region had individuals that were accepting applications. And I don't know if it was time limited per se, but it was there were eligibility elements to it that were under that's right, there was an additional SEED directive. So if individuals wanted to have a look back at the SEED directive, that would provide the full eligibility requirements as they apply from those who may have been affected in the summer. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That assumptions is correct. There's an amount here reflecting the 2022 flood as well as an amount here reflecting the 2023 wildfires. They, just to be clear, don't include necessarily or they don't include the firefighting suppression costs that would have been incurred by ECC, which is part of a separate request we've seen. But this is for the emergency amounts that were incurred under, as I said, both 2022 and 2023 for those two events in MACA. Thank you.