Thank you, Minister. Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We could look back and say this wasn't rolled out properly, but at the end of the day, it happened so fast. It shut down our territory. It shut down, global. It was global. I didn't agree with it at the start, but when I think about it, I have to be here to represent my people as the MLA for Nunakput. I am going to support this in regards to priority one, safety of the people of the Northwest Territories.
When you look back, like this past week, I asked in the House, our community bubbles, we need to be supporting. The funding that we're getting, I hope they can really look at helping our community, local community governments in regards to what's happening here. With everything that's been going on, money from the start in April when the local community government, for instance in Tuktoyaktuk, they did a roadblock. I wish that they could get their funding back, that they did outreach because everybody was scared. As an Inuvialuit beneficiary, we did have a pandemic, Kittegaryumiut. Three thousand families, 3,000 Inuvialuit beneficiaries died there in Kittegaryumiut, 17 miles away from Tuktoyaktuk. For this, when they say pandemic, it means a whole different thing from where I'm from. What we did, the government didn't roll out this the way they should, but they did do something. They acted on it, shooting from the hip, but we're dealing right now. Right now, we're in the whole COVID-19 world.
Basically, the safety of the people is priority. Don't care about the money. The local community bubbles that we should be looking at in regards to helping our local community governments again with funding that they expended upon COVID-19, which should be looked at and should be helped. Our elders in my riding, we should be funding them. They're doing a good job. Our local community government, the community corporation and stuff like that, they're doing good work with helping, sewing kits and stuff like that to keep people busy, but dark days are coming. We've got nothing happening in the community because of COVID, so we should be looking at helping them more. I know the federal government's really been doing their best. They've been doing a pretty good job, and I'm not Liberal. That's the truth, though. They've been doing good work. Thank you.
The schools' safety is priority. The schools, our elders, because if one gets in the community, I don't know how many respirators we've got, but the last time, I was told we had five, and it's all here in Yellowknife. Our small communities are really relying on this COVID secretariat for the safety of our people. Like I said, it's not about the money. I don't care about the money. It's the safety of the people in my riding. They're doing good work at the airport. I see when I land there, when we're allowed to go home for the weekend, they're doing good work. They are doing the best that they can with what they've got, and they're driving really nice trucks, too. We've got to take it easy on that.
The biggest thing for me is medical travel. That's affected us. It's been really hard on some of my constituents. They come down. They do a two-day testing or whatever they're doing in Edmonton, and they're back here, up to Inuvik for two weeks. If there's any way, for medical travel that I've said in my Member's statement yesterday, that we could shorten it up by doing that rapid testing when it's available, it should be done. Like I said, I'm in support of this. It's safety of the people of the Northwest Territories and in my riding for sure. I thank all who are doing the job, the front-line workers. I want to thank the front-line workers, the RCMP, the health centres, the store workers, the storefront workers, everybody, the hamlets, their staff. I want to thank them for all the work that they're doing under stressful times. Like I said, Mr. Chair, I am in support of this, and we'll just go from there. Thank you.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't have any comments or response. Thank you.
Thank you. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. A little while ago, in this session, I believe that the Premier made a statement that she had overwhelming support from the Indigenous governments. Then we hear today that many haven't even gotten back to her. I think this is just an example of the confusion that surrounds the creation of this unit and how the misrepresentation of the facts seems to be happening. I can't support increasing government employment at a time when there are so many other needs in our territory. We spent the last few weeks here in session discussing our housing crisis and the last six months on how inadequate our healthcare system is to deal with this pandemic, and our government's solution is to take funding provided by the federal government to deal with COVID and create more layers of government, more bureaucrats.
I understand Cabinet isn't too worried about job losses or businesses going under, since it appears their solution is just to ensure that everyone works for the GNWT. The statistic of 4,000 jobs lost, a staggering statistic given our population and demographics, rolled off the tongue of the Finance Minister pretty easily. You know why? Because they're all private-sector jobs. Coming from the private sector, it's absurd to me that we considered spending millions of dollars on more office space and a handful of senior bureaucratic positions. I believe we were told those items alone would cost a few million dollars. When employees returned to work, why did we not rejig the offices then, create the needed space at that time, and reconfigure? Especially if this is a temporary department and a lot of the GNWT employees are continuing to work from home, the rental of new space seems like a waste of money to me.
I would like to see the federal COVID money used to hire nurses, purchase equipment and PPE, support the private sector, create a public safety department instead of this secretariat, and bring together all the varying departments that protect our people under one department so that, when another crisis hits, we will already have all our services coordinated. That would have been way more useful than something so reactive that is way too late and past the time it was needed. If it had already been in place for so long and you've already gone ahead and spent all this money, how come nothing is improving? You've gone ahead, you've done this, so what good did that do for us in the recent cases? In the situation of the gym exposures, contact tracing wasn't even performed. Instead, a panic-inducing public announcement was made hours after a list of contacts could have been obtained and called, reducing the potential spread by hours. Instead, that did not happen, and we were only lucky that other cases didn't occur as a result.
The Cabinet hides behind the CPHO in deflection of any questions around contact tracing and such. I don't understand, then, why creating more GNWT employees and more bureaucracy is supposed to improve that, when really, that's where we want to get our answers from. That's where the issues lie. There are no communications between you as the Cabinet and the CPHO. I don't see that creating more bureaucratic layers and crap is really going to do any good. Thank you.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also came from the private sector before I arrived here. This is the longest I've spent working in the government, other than a stint when I was about 20 years old as an intern. I do also take seriously the situation that is being faced by the private sector right now. That said, Mr. Chair, let me go through a number of the other items that I heard.
Increasing government employment. Again, Mr. Chair, it is very difficult to fight a pandemic when you are redeploying staff who have other jobs to do. The money that we received from the federal government was not money that we could take and drop down wherever we chose to drop it down. The federal government was extremely specific about the types of things they wanted us to do with the funding that they were providing, and not only to us; to every province and territory across Canada. They had very specific intentions. For example, PPE for health workers and non-health workers; support for vulnerable populations; testing; contact tracing; and data management. These were the ways in which the bundles of funding that we received from the federal government were to be allotted.
We had some increased flexibility with respect to the way we spent the airline funding. Although, again, that was negotiated on the part of the northern territories, and specifically our territory, so that we could support every single airline in the Northwest Territories and not only the commercial carriers for passenger flight services, as was given to some of the other provinces, because we wanted to support every single airline in the sector. We've been trying to negotiate that kind of flexibility, and the federal government, to their credit, Mr. Chair, have been doing a lot in terms of trying to ensure that funds are flexible. The wage top-up is another example, for instance, where, even though the way things work here, that wages are higher and, therefore, some of the wage top-up wasn't necessarily working the way it was envisioned in Ottawa, we were given the flexibility to adapt it to our needs.
However, that's not the case across the board. The money that is coming in from the federal government, significant amounts of money, millions of dollars of funding that has come in from the federal government, a lot of it has come in for specific purposes, and the money that is being put towards the work in the COVID secretariat is no different. It's not that we can go in and just spend it on more nursing positions. It's not that simple; I wish it were.
As for the job losses, Mr. Chair, we have experienced job losses. So has everywhere else in Canada or the world experienced job losses. We are quite fortunate here in the Northwest Territories to be comparatively insulated such that, by the end of this particular calendar year, we are expecting to be back up at around 90 percent of our pre-COVID job numbers. The exception to that is in the tourism and hospitality industry. I said that earlier today, Mr. Chair. That industry is going to be continuing to be struggling and suffering, and that is not new or different here than it is anywhere else. That is the message I've heard from other Ministers across Canada, and all of those Ministers across Canada are asking for funding specific from the federal government and are looking for ways that we can use best practices one to the next.
That doesn't change the fact that we have to continue to respond to COVID-19. It doesn't change the fact that we have to continue to keep the people in the Northwest Territories safe. Nobody is going to have jobs in the way that they want to have jobs if we have to shut everything back down because there is a community spread that develops. So far, we have not had community spread in the Northwest Territories, Mr. Chair, and it is our intention to do everything we can to continue that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to talk about the reporting back from Indigenous governments, and make that very clear. It's not that the Indigenous did not report back to me. It's that I didn't get hold of all the Indigenous governments. I had a meeting and eight Indigenous governments were there. Seven of the Indigenous governments, on that call, vocally stated that they support the secretariat, once I explained what it was. I had one in that call who said, "I need more information." That chief actually, once we gave the information, replied back to me and didn't say, "I didn't support it." All she said was, "You need to get this out more. You need to communicate more."
Since then, I met with two other Indigenous governments, and both of those Indigenous governments gave me support for the secretariat. Nine out of 10 Indigenous governments that I connected with gave me overwhelming support for the secretariat. One, I don't know, because she just said, "Communicate better." Then the other ones, it's not that they didn't reply back. It's that I hadn't had the chance to get back to them because the secretariat has only been operating for less than a month. I've been in session, so my time has been really tight, too.
The other thing I want to say is about stepping up to the plate. We had people stepping up to the plate. I think every one of you knows enforcement people, and I heard and I believe them. If we had had a forest fire this summer, we would have had to make a choice: fight the fire or do the enforcement. That's the decisions that we would have had to make. It's not about "just as easy." We took out most of MACA. We took out most of health. Those departments stepped up, and they can't keep doing it. About stakeholder engagement, yes, I didn't engage with everyone, but I did talk to the staff. I wish that MLAs would also talk to the staff because they said it wasn't sustainable. Sometimes, we have to listen to the people who are providing the services, as well.
As for coordinating, that's what we're trying to do. The secretariat has only been in place for less than a month, now. I don't know what kind of miracles you're wanting. Before that, absolutely, it wasn't coordinated well. That's why we said we had to do this. It's only been in place for less than a month, and we are hoping that we'll get more efficient. Like I said, for this year, it's around $9 million, and we are hoping the federal government will give us more money. Also, we're looking at ways to save money on the isolation units, which you'll see coming forward very soon, because we already presented to committee on our plans to do that. We will bring down the costs, but you have to remember that this is for the people. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Premier. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As my colleague explained, there is $8 million extra that has not come from the federal government that you are asking us to approve, and I would like to actually see that money spent on better things than Russ Neudorf's salary and some office space. Sorry, my apologies. I apologize. That being said, also, I do recognize and understand what the Finance Minister explained about payments, around what the money was used for. However, as mentioned, you are asking us to approve other and additional funding, which I think would be better spent to all of the myriad of issues that we have been raising for the last three weeks in session.
When it comes to the Indigenous governments, I have heard from many. I have heard from a chief who says they do not support this. I do not hear that comment or any of those discussions coming from Cabinet or any explanation of that side of things. You have been talking about the COVID secretariat for a very, very long time. If you did not have time before session to reach out to the Indigenous governments, then you clearly don't know how to do consultation. Thank you. No questions, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Member. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can I just get some more information on the parameters of the COVID secretariat federal funding, what exactly we could and could not spend it on? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There have been quite a number of funding pots with respect to the Canada-Northwest Territories Safe Restart, which is the dollar funding that is coming towards the COVID secretariat. Funding under this agreement was to be used for testing; contact tracing; data management; healthcare system capacity; vulnerable populations; municipalities, on that one, I will note with respect to the municipalities, Mr. Chair, this is one area where we were required to put in a 50-50 contribution to match the amount that was allotted from the federal government, so that is one area where there was an additional amount that went in from the GNWT; PPE for both health workers and non-health workers; childcare for returning workers; and the beginning of some sick leave availability. Mr. Chair, I am happy to provide a costed breakdown rather than reading out the numbers, or I can certainly read out the numbers to the House. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that is a pretty expansive list, and I heard support for vulnerable persons in there. I am confident that, if this money is removed in a supplementary today, the smart folks at Health and Social Services and the Department of Finance will find a way to spend it in one of those categories. In regard to the $8 million that is the GNWT contribution, is that required to receive the rest of the funding? Are we under any contribution agreements such that we had to put up that money? I note the Minister mentioned that, if we wanted to give money to municipalities, it was 50 percent funded, but is that why we are seeing a GNWT contribution here for other reasons? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I am going to turn it over to the deputy minister because I think I just read out the wrong listing of items, and I just want to make sure that I am not getting that wrong. I am going to send it over there while I make sure I am on the right page. Sorry, Mr. Chair. Then I can come back to the $8 million.
Thank you, Minister. Deputy minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The $8.7 million is the residual amount that has to be funded. As Members know, the total projected cost of the secretariat to the end of the year is $31.7 million, which $23.4 million is going to be funded from the first northern bundle, which is being transferred, as Members saw in an earlier page, from the Department of Finance. The remaining $8.7 million is the forecasted gap that is going to be funded from the consolidated revenue fund of the government. Then the government has to make up the difference. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Deputy Minister. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes. I think I first heard these figures back in August, September, but it's been a while, when I remember the COVID secretariat was first announced. I hear the deputy minister saying that the gap there is the projected cost of the COVID secretariat. However, I have also heard commitments from the Minister of Finance, commitment from the Premier, that we will go find cost-saving measures. I have heard a number of really great ideas of how we can do that. They each have pros and cons, as I have said. Shortening isolation periods, increasing rapid testing, renting apartments instead of hotels, putting the hotels out for tender, allowing isolation centres outside of the four hubs, there are plenty of ways that we can save money in this area, and I believe there is a recognition. I am struggling to pass money based on a projection that we are also saying that we will then go and correct. Can I just get a sense of: that initial projection which we are being asked to fund now, has it been revisited due to the number of cost-saving options that are being explored? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the Member already listed quite a number of the cost-saving measures that are being quite actively considered. One of the functions and sort of one of the expectations on the secretariat staff right now is, in fact, to go out and provide some of the background for potentially reducing those costs through things like an RFP process for the isolation centres and revisiting a consideration of, in fact, who is being paid for, whose travel is being paid for.
I did want to note, Mr. Chair, it's not as simple as just drawing a line and saying we will not spend money or we will not pay for certain persons to travel. There are Charter considerations to be considered here, where some people, if the CPHO is saying they cannot stay in their own homes and we are telling them then you have to self-isolate at your own cost for 14 days, it creates a significant inequity for the people who live outside of those four hub communities. Figuring that route forward is not as simple as just drawing the line.
There are some fundamental rights at issue here and decisions that are going to need to be made. All of which is to say that that work is exactly what is happening right now with the COVID secretariat staff. Indeed, those decisions are coming forward and being worked on right now. Yes, again, it will have to keep continuing to come forward and evolve, just as our response to COVID-19 is evolving, just as the reality of the pandemic is evolving. I think the point has already been made that we need to be better at sharing that information earlier and more often. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Member for Yellowknife North.
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to begin by saying I am very happy with our COVID response to date. We have one active case right now, and it was a scary case a couple of weeks ago when we were risking community spread. By all accounts, it looks like our response at our borders has been great to date. We are one of the best jurisdictions in testing. I am very grateful we are getting these staff. I have no issue with the COVID secretariat as a whole. I think it is needed. I do have issues asking the Legislative Assembly to pass the costs projected for the isolation centres when there seems to be a consensus that those costs will not actually be what we are passing today.
I have heard a number of options, and I am happy to see the commitment of variance reporting. I think maybe an accountant would say: MLA Johnson, the appropriation is just an estimate, and then the actuals are what actually matter, and the reporting and the variance reporting is what actually matters. However, the Minister of Finance has often told me that, if I want to ask for more things, then I have to ask what I would remove from the budget. I, at the very beginning of this session, said I wanted to see more money for housing and I want to see more money for the municipal infrastructure gap. I recognize we are dealing with a supplemental appropriation and that that it is not the capital estimates, but those things are related. If we move $5 million from the operations budget, that means there is more money in capital. It gives us money to work. I will do my best as an MLA that, when I ask for something, I give Cabinet an idea of where I would like it removed from. I have asked for $5 million for municipalities. I know they took a beating due to COVID. I am happy to hear that this funding pool could actually be used by them if we match the dollars.
I will be bringing a motion to remove $5 million from the isolation centres. One of the problems is: the way this supplementary appropriation works is it's essentially one line item. I don't want to remove $5 million from the staff. I don't want to remove $5 million from testing. I don't want to remove $5 million from PPE. I don't want to remove $5 million from the border. I am happy with those things. I am just not convinced that the projection in front of us has the homework done to actually find the cost-savings for the isolation centres. I heard from my colleague MLA Lafferty that he will be bringing a motion. I believe, procedurally, the best way for me to do this would be to wait until his motion and then bring mine to remove $5 million after.
I have one more comment. I want to clarify that, if this money is removed and we don't find those cost savings, which it seems everyone wants to find, there is nothing stopping government from coming back with another supplemental appropriation in the next sitting. There is nothing stopping them from saying, "We tried. We did the variance reporting. Sorry, we need that $5 million for isolation centres back." However, the way I see it, we're going to find that cost saving. I as a Member of the Legislative Assembly don't want to approve money that probably won't be spent because my experience with departments is that, usually, they just make a race to spend it all in the fiscal and I don't have the democratic oversight of that money. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that my message around, "Don't ask for more if you're not taking something out," is at least falling on some receptive ears. Notwithstanding that, Mr. Chair, the comment about the projections and a lack of certainty or clarity around the projections, the way that we come up with the projection of $31.7 million, Mr. Chair, was by looking at the actuals that were spent by and across all departments in the initial response, April, May, June, and I think July, as well, which was in and of itself a bit of a process by having to initially putting up codes and saying to each department, "Please code under this COVID code and try to maintain and identify how much is being spent," and cobbling all that together. That took a bit of effort, and it took a lot of effort on the part of all the departments and then on the Department of Finance to pull that together, to evaluate where all of the costs were coming in and where the spending was being affected in order to have our response to COVID-19.
Once that was done, once those were received, that's how the projections for what then became the COVID secretariat were done. It was based on knowing what we had spent to date under the conditions that we were under, under the Chief Public Health Officer's orders that we were under. Those projections are projections, but they are projections that are fairly accurately based. That said, as far as concern about "the money will just be spent because it's there," Mr. Chair, first of all, I think I've said before that that's not what departments should be doing, ever. Besides which, this is not that kind of situation. I don't think anyone wants to be spending money unnecessarily on COVID-19. Nobody wants COVID-19 in the first place. It's not a situation where the money would then be available to move around within the department, because there is no department here to be moving it around to. There is a very discrete and separate set of functions, which is what we will be reporting on now monthly here to the Members, at the very least, if not to the public on the website, so there is not really anywhere for that money to be squirreled away.
I appreciate the Member's creativity in trying to find a way to save it, but again, this is not something where it's going to sit there and get shuffled off. Also, one last comment, Mr. Chair, is that the money isn't coming from programs and services. It's not coming from municipalities. It is impacting the surplus, the operating surplus, but if it doesn't have to be spent on COVID, then it won't be spent on COVID, period. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. At this time, we'll take a short break.
---SHORT RECESS
Committee, we will call the meeting back to order. Before I start, I just want to let you know that the interpreters have gone home, so we don't have any interpreters here. Okay. We'll go to Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I understand that I am the last one to speak and that people are eager to get going, so I'm going to try to be brief. I want to start off by thanking the public service and just saying that I agree that people were asked to work different straight across the Northwest Territories, across Canada, and across the world. People had a lot of responsibility on their backs and really did perform during, as you say, unprecedented times. I just wanted to start off by thanking them for that. I do agree with the MLA Lafferty from Monfwi, my colleague from Monfwi, that I do have concerns around the COVID secretariat in the sense that no one has died from COVID luckily, in the Northwest Territories, and that we are seeing people die in the Northwest Territories from addictions, from illness, from homicide, and from suicide, and $8 million could go a long way to support addictions in the Northwest Territories and the other demons that we have in the Northwest Territories that are taking Northerners from us. I do share concerns that MLA Lafferty highlighted, as well.
I also share the same concerns as my colleague from Nunakput, MLA Jacobson, in that over a quarter of people from the Northwest Territories are considered high risk, that COVID running rampant in communities would be absolutely devastating, and that we do need to be able to have some support for the orders of the Chief Public Health Officer in the Northwest Territories. My constituents have shared with me that largely they appreciate that the borders are closed and that does make them feel safer and that they do feel protection from that but that they are frustrated by the responses from the GNWT to support those orders, namely the communication from the GNWT and also through consistent policy foundation from the GNWT.
I understand from the Premier and her colleagues that this COVID secretariat would stand to fix some of those issues. I know from my constituents that items like ProtectNWT, 811, and policy and communications, border patrol through highways and airports are things that they're not willing to let go of. At the same time, people expect us in this room to make sure that the government is being fiscally responsible and is spending money wisely. I also share the comments from my colleague from Yellowknife North in that this money could be spent very, very effectively on things like co-investment fund and municipalities. Eight million dollars for our municipal funding gap would go a long way.
I have concerns about the GNWT being able to change the way that they are running the COVID secretariat without the added pressure to do so. When we look at our self-isolation centres, and we've heard a lot of different ideas this evening and throughout session about ways to reduce the cost of our self-isolation centres, but the isolation centres account for 54 percent of the overall COVID secretariat cost. My worry is that if there isn't an incentive to reduce the costs of that, namely the money just isn't available, then how will we ensure that we're not just funding a status quo COVID secretariat? A lot of times they say that necessity inspires change and if that necessity isn't there, how can we make sure that the isolation centres do change? My first question is: if there is not the support for the supplementary this evening for the COVID secretariat, what happens? If there is not the support for the full supplementary, as the MLA for Yellowknife mentioned removing money from the supplementary, then what happens? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. If there is not support for the supplementary, then the extreme end would be to have special warrant for funding to support the actual response to COVID-19, which isn't really something we want to have to do. I don't think that's where this is going, though, Mr. Chair. If there is a removal of some random amount of money, and I don't mean to be disparaging, but essentially a random amount of money that just gets pulled out, then there is less money to deliver on the things that it's meant to deliver on. I don't know where we could take that out of, Mr. Chair. Something would have to give. Does it mean the communications budget gets cut? You want to sort of assume that you would do some sort of cost analysis of where you can keep the money, or do you keep funding as you are now in support of the Chief Public Health Officer, hoping that there is a change in the orders that allows for some savings? I don't have an answer to that, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. MLA.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. One of the things I hear quite often from both the business community and from constituents is that they feel that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Unless they are willing to be the one who stands up and says, "This isn't fair. My neighbour got this," or, "This isn't fair. This other business got this," or, "Somebody else is getting this type of exemption," when it comes to businesses, that's a big deal. That means that somebody else is able to pay their bills, whereas somebody else isn't because they didn't realize that they were able to go back to the Chief Public Health Officer and put their foot down and fight it, basically. How would the COVID secretariat make changes to that, and what guarantee do we have over on this side of the House that this promise of better communication and better policy foundation is actually going to happen? Thank you.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I can speak to one example, being that the ProtectNWT is meant to start to have essentially a connection to the business community so that there is a better connection between what's happening with businesses and with ProtectNWT, so that there is more streamlining that is being done within ProtectNWT and enforcement and compliance, so that the exemptions can be done in a more straightforward fashion, can be done more quickly, and can be done, rather than sort of as one-offs but rather by groupings by type. That policy work is being done in the secretariat, and then the implementation of it would also come through the secretariat in consultation with the Chief Public Health Officer. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. We've heard discussion of monthly variance reporting from the Minister of Finance on the COVID secretariat mentioned this evening, and there has also been a lot of discussion around ways to reduce the cost of the COVID secretariat. What type of communication with this side of the House does Cabinet see happening in order to make sure that those cost reductions are actually happening and that this side of the House is being included in that conversation? Thank you.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Mr. Chair, I would direct that over to the Premier if I could, please.
Thank you, Minister. Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. What we've done already is we've provided I believe it was AOC committee with a paper that talks about what we're doing now, going out and engaging with the stakeholders, the municipal and Indigenous governments, et cetera, to ask about the isolation centres. That work happened last week. It's happening this week. What I can commit to is, once we compile those results, which will be in the next couple of weeks, I'm pretty sure, it will go through Cabinet. Then I'll be offering committee a briefing, or we will provide the information to committee. However, at any time, if committee wants to meet with me weekly or monthly on it, I am more than willing to meet with committee, as well. I think it's important that we work together on this. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Premier. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I am wondering if Cabinet is willing to publish a list of exemptions to the public health orders that are happening across the Northwest Territories, of course, leaving out people's personal information, but just so that people across the Northwest Territories can see what types of exemptions are happening, both in the business community and for personal individuals, as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the idea behind that suggestion. I can tell the Member that the Department of Finance, and me as Minister of Finance, along, of course, with the Premier and the Minister of health, do meet regularly, weekly, with the Chief Public Health Officer. What I will do is commit to raising that at the next meeting, having brought this forward here and being responsible for bringing forward the supplemental. I will commit to raising it and getting back to the Member as to what the response is, but I am concerned that that might not be as easy as just saying that we'll excise personal information and be able to share everything. There is individual information, family information, businesses. It may be simple, and there may be a simple solution. Before I can go any further, I need to check with the Chief Public Health Officer. I will make that inquiry and get the response back to the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Member.
