Caroline Wawzonek

Mr. Speaker, the regulations for the Northwest Territories Mineral Resources Act define the first madeintheNorthwest Territories approach to governing mineral development. That is not the only thing that makes them historic. They are the first legal instrument to be developed in their entirety under the legislative development protocol set out by the Northwest Territories Intergovernmental Agreement on Lands and Resource Management.

Later this afternoon, I will be tabling a report highlighting the status and success of the Intergovernmental Council’s collaborative process. This collaboration...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the language around what the deadline and the reporting would be was crafted jointly. I'm not sure if perhaps legislative counsel wants to speak more to that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that is really one of the core elements of government renewal and the shift in thinking around this is that every department has to be thinking about its evaluative process. We have, Mr. Speaker, when government renewal was coming out, we put in place a requirement of program evaluation policy requiring that any programs over $2 million, we need to have a logic model and performance tracking indicators. Mr. Speaker, a lot of programs did not. A lot of departments struggled with that. The majority of the capacity for evaluation resides in the Department of...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, that's the regional COLO payments. Madam Chair, I didn't bring those details. That has been already before the House. So I certainly can provide an update to Members, but I don't know that we have that here in front of us. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to say that all of the phase 1 work, including up to and including the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority, have all had their inventories completed as of July of this year. That was the last group to make their way through. That work is all done now. And phase 2 is also well underway.

Since November of last year, we kicked off with Housing Northwest Territories, Department of Finance, and Department of Education, Culture and Employment. They are the first ones to see themselves having their programs select programs...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I certainly have asked that the idea put forward that there be some further effort from one of our counterparts in the federal government responsible for this that they be in a position to provide more funding, that they recognize the burden they've put on small communities, and recognize the burden they've put on small Indigenous and remote communities. So let me see certainly if I can provide some further information on their behalf. It's certainly my efforts to distinguish the Government of the Northwest Territories from the choices made in Ottawa, I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm quite pleased to get that question. I can say a couple of things quickly, mindful of time, although I would be happy to go on longer if I had more time.

First of all, Mr. Speaker, the MIP, or the Mineral Incentive Program funding, this is the amount of funding that is provided to exploration projects of all different sorts. And out of the almost $1.5 million disbursed thus far, Mr. Speaker, over $1.2 million of it went to critical minerals and metals projects, including a good proportion for lithium projects. So there's that.

It helps leverage...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, again, the federal government changed the tax rates on April 1st of this year and when there's the ability to make the calculation of the amounts for the year, then we will do that and be able to do that. The federal government does provide the rebates on a quarterly basis. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's not under the agricultural strategy, there's not a carve out for one riding or another necessarily. They are done by ways of application. So, therefore, not necessarily reflecting that there might be more challenges to participate in one form of food growth and food commercial good growth or food creation because, Mr. Speaker, there's other options. And certainly, in some communities, country food harvesting may well take a greater place and have a greater role in providing for a community than what agriculture, say, might in another. But that's...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, on my left I have Kelly Bluck, the director of fiscal policy for the Department of Finance. And Laura Jeffrey on my right, legislative drafter in the Department of Justice.