Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we all know, water's very critical to day-to-day life so I won't go at length of that; I'm sure that stands as a fact on its own.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister's saying he's not aware of the problem or aware of what they're going to do, or maybe we can clarify what the Minister can do in his role as Minister of communities when the city of Yellowknife's struggling with this potential financial endeavour. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I want to -- oddly enough, I'll do it this way: I want to acknowledge the great statement by the Member for Yellowknife South about our good friend Steve Loutitt. She said much of what I would have liked to have said but it is recognition, so I'll say this to Mr. Steve Loutitt, our retiring DM of infrastructure. I want to thank him for his many years of service, and I used to call him -- sorry, I used to call him director Loutitt when he was a manager, and then guess what, he got appointed to director. Then I used to call him assistant deputy minister...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one of the challenges I see as the downtown MLA, that we see a lot of -- we'll call it social problems. And, unfortunately, police officers are being used as social workers to deal with them. But the reality is they are being called on more and more and taken away from the primary job for general public safety and general duty stuff.

Mr. Speaker, would the Premier be willing to look at some type of way of increasing the police presence in the downtown of Yellowknife? I know he doesn't instruct the chief superintendent, but he does have sway with respect to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Premier who also is the Minister of Justice.

Mr. Speaker, the last budget, we had a rollout, I believe, of nine policing officers under the Indigenous policing initiative. I'm curious as to what the actual rollout looks like, where they are -- where did they go to and where they didn't go to with respect to the nine that the territorial government was getting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, is it targeting specifically critical minerals? Is it targeting a specific sector in the mining industry? And where should we see sort of some dynamic results and when should we see them? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this case, I appreciate the Premier's statement because if you saw exactly what I see, it's weird. So it's weird that we're collaborative in that sense that -- so seeing the issue that he's pointed out, and I agree, it just seems weird. That's it, Mr. Speaker.

With respect to the motion, what I want to say is this: I wish there was more of a collaborative process. I'm not going to speak against the motion; it's very difficult to do that. I mean, there's everything in here I like. The only thing I didn't like is the process on how we were told this and, of...

And hence, Mr. Speaker, we have the policy now before us and that's why this motion is coming forward. Mr. Speaker, I have asked different times at committee when did they review the affirmative action policy. They have not. There's no answers. That's why this motion exists. Mr. Speaker, the Premier and everyone else can talk about the impacts on these people -- on folks, but there are equity groups that are being impacted by this. That's why it needs to go back to committee.

Mr. Speaker, this isn't the -- there was at least four letters that said slow down, have consultation. That's what this...

I'll withdraw.

Well, I appreciate the Premier's creative imagination, but I wasn't formalizing there's a party politics. I was talking about the guise of the government collaborating together in a manner that they never do. So the Premier does have an imagination on this particular guard, I didn't specifically make that illustration clear enough, and I didn't say the party of one that already acts like that. I mean, I am making a clear point of the impression. So he can be creative in his thoughts and his imagination but he's completely wrong. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is a problem when you have a Minister who straddles many files on a big file in this particular one. I appreciate the answer, though. Mr. Speaker, does the government have the money in cash to pay out Naka Power for whatever this transaction is, or what's the solution for that problem? Thank you.