Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's a few issues in there. I think I've caught them all.

First of all, Mr. Speaker, we're not Alberta. They were dealing with less than one percent of their population that was forced to be evacuated. We were looking at almost 10 percent of the population in the Northwest Territories being evacuated. And, Mr. Speaker, I know folks are looking at Alberta. I suspect folks in British Columbia were looking at Alberta, as were folks in Saskatchewan looking at Alberta, and even Nova Scotia might, frankly, be looking at us because they were offering, at last...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, that's correct.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is onetime finding to solve the problem for now. Madam Chair, I'm not going to pretend that the challenges of high fuel costs and rates are necessarily going away today, but there is another application in that is that is working its way through and that may help to provide some relief going forward. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, one of the other things done under the umbrella of the fish revitalization strategy was work on marketing, was work on understanding the market for fish, and consistently it has come back that there indeed is a very strong market for freshwater fish and for the kind of product that's available here in the Northwest Territories, that it is a distinct and unique product. Geopolitically with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that price only increased and the demand only increased. So we're at a moment in time here right now that we very much would like to be able...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Madam Chair, you might recall there has been a revision to the fiscal responsibility policy where there is a commitment to indeed do more tracking and reporting throughout the course of the year with respect to where we're at on the fiscal responsibility policy. That right now will be expected to come out in the fall, which it normally hadn't been previously. So we can certainly look at if there's an opportunity to do that whenever there's an infrastructure sup. I don't think there's any barrier to doing so. But I will confirm and if I'm wrong in that, would advise...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Madam Chair, the federal government had indicated some you know, within for the last recent few years that they were going to be transitioning out of having the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation, and given that it is their act and their system, certainly seemed logical to anticipate and wait for them to indeed perform that – to complete what they said they were going to do. I think they were hoping for some other solutions. I can't say as to why they haven't moved faster or what they've done or not done or why they have done or not done it.

What I can say is we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. There's nothing extra in this. There is just shy of $19 million, though, in ECC's budget for fire suppression efforts this fiscal year. So obviously the efforts that have been undertaken already to fight that fire would have come out of that budget, and then with respect to the emergency evacuation and emergency response, I mean that, again, the EMO sits as well under MACA so certainly a lot of that would be expected at least to be fronted from there.

A large expense 90 percent of any Disaster Assistance Program monies would be refundable, but obviously that remains to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So we're hoping on there being just over a million dollars this year, and then increasing next year to over a $1.5 or $1.6, again depending on and subject to the amount of production that is available. Those revenues then offset the costs of running the plant. Certainly if production is higher, then there is more revenue that offsets further. And really can be hopefully a snowball approach, Madam Chair. There's more production, more fish for sale, more revenues, more fishers interested, the cost will the price of fish will go up as we're able to provide that supply to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, this is an amount that's more in line with what historical amounts for a supplementary reserve would have been, although I think even then still perhaps a bit enhanced. The $65 million was a number that we added or increased supplementary reserve to during COVID when it was apparent that, and very obvious, all governments were facing significant and unexpected needs that were arising over the course of that period of time. Obviously with the end of COVID, it was hoped that we would not continue to require that level of increase to the supplementary reserve...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we are not expecting this to be an ongoing thing. This is really part of the transition now that there is well, hopefully soon to be the operational fish plant in Hay River, and over the next three years it will be transitioning to be a locally operated hopefully locally operated fish plant. But for now, we need to get it open and running. So unfortunately with the production in fish having gone down over the last five and so years, as a result of which there's a bit of a gap particularly in this first year in terms of what we're expecting in revenues...