Mahsi, Madam Speaker. I would like the residents of the Northwest Territories, especially the elderly and the sick, that I do care for their health and well-being. The issue here is: are we doing prudent spending on behalf of the people so that we can save dollars that can be used towards the small communities in terms of buying ventilation equipment, buying all of the necessary items that are required for PPE for all the COVID-related issues. With Alberta travellers coming into our territory, it's a big concern because we are on the highway system, my community. I have four communities on the highway system. We are seeing lots of traffic, and we have seen all summer Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec licence plates into our territory. I stated all this yesterday, and I just want to reiterate it today, that that shows that there are problems manning our border check stops. We are not doing a good job of that at all.
I think this COVID team has been in place since March. I spoke to it a length, too, stating that we have a workforce of close to 6,000 people, 6,000 employees within the Government of the Northwest Territories. I suggested many times to the Premier and Cabinet that we should have used people from our own workforce, which would have saved us having to pay for benefits and compensation for 150 new people. That would have been significant savings. The federal government has contributed $24 million, 23.4, to the GNWT for COVID. I would like to call it a task force. It should have been called a task force, probably. I suggested that they use that, those federal dollars, for this task force and not have to touch the GNWT taxpayers' dollars. That can go to much-needed complements, as I mentioned at the start of my speech.
Also, I noted that it's recorded that the Finance Minister could not assure this House that we would get success, I mean the funding continuing for every successive year. There was no indication of that. It could be a one-time funding pot, but they are saying on that side of the House that of course the Prime Minister will throw money at it every chance he has. We do not know the future of the federal politics at this point, whether there is going to be a new election or whether they may change their tune. There could be some other emergency. This COVID is a serious, serious business, but we need to tighten up our actions, and we should have done it with this secretariat. We could have saved a lot of money. The GNWT, being the highest level of government in the Northwest Territories, has to show the people, the businesses, that we represent that we can take on and be prudent and fiscally responsible in our spending.
There are lots of news reports out there on social media about our isolation centres. That is another big catastrophe since day one. We are well into November. Since March, November now, nothing has improved with those isolation centres. There are still lots of people walking, walking away from the centres, stories of people partying all night. They got free places to stay to party. That has not been fixed. We are finding that there are a lot of problems, still. We have got a team in place since March, and we have not made any headway. We keep saying, Cabinet keeps saying, that we are making headway, but I did not see anything.
We should have had all the residents who return, even from medical, who are in the isolation centres to get tested, not the rapid testing. I am not a big fan of an instant test because it's been shown to fail in some instances because, six days later, symptoms can appear. I am a fan of the lab testing that takes about five days, maybe less, but you can send it out to different labs if you looked around and found them. Then we could have had, we could have shortened isolation stay for many residents if we were to do that, but no, no, we don't want to do that. We want to show the people of the NWT that we've got money to play with.
When I first come into this Assembly here, we were already at a debt level. We need to thank the federal government for raising it from 1.3 to 1.9. It was mentioned yesterday, one forest fire in the summer will wipe out our debt level again, and we are in financial trouble. It's just the way the government spends. Cabinet spends on that side of the House without real consultation with Regular Members on this side of the House, who represent many of the residents of the Northwest Territories. Madam Speaker, having said that, I support all the other items on there. It's just the COVID secretariat that is stuck in there, so I have to vote against this bill. Mahsi.
Thank you. To the motion. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Marsi cho, Madam Speaker. I will not say too much beyond what some of my colleagues have already spoken about this motion. I will say, when this news first came up, the news reports in China last year about this terrible virus, COVID-19, I thought, "I hope it doesn't come this way." All of a sudden, you start hearing that kind of trickle starting to come through and the terrible sickness and illness. Again, every day, I was thinking, "I just hope it does not come this way," and sure enough, it did. It did make its way here. We started to hear businesses closed, businesses that had kept open for 200 years all of a sudden start closing their doors, that there is operations in place, businesses, like all kinds of, again, businesses are open during the World War II, like through the world wars, that, all of a sudden because of COVID, they are closed now. Things we've never seen in this generation, that none of us has ever experienced, and I kept thinking, "I hope it doesn't come this way." Sure enough, it did, and one of the cases hit my home town. That was scary, but we got through that. When I visit my home town, if the weather is nice enough, I'll go and visit some of my lost loved ones. I go and visit my pops at the grave, and on the way out of the graveyard in Deninu Kue, there is a large area there of a previous pandemic from the flu and TB. There are some terrible, terrible scourges that hit our territory and our people really hard, and I hope none of this ever happens again. How do we navigate that?
In really thinking about this, again, I have spoken about this early on. When I first saw the documents that came out from the Cabinet side of things, I thought it was some sort of weird joke. I thought, "It had better not be April 1st." I looked at the date, and no, this is actually happening. Because, looking at this and at our responses, we're the only jurisdiction in the country that is doing this, that is creating a department to react to this. It has never been done. It's not done anywhere else. Other jurisdictions are aligning their resources to battle this through their different departments and doing it in that way. Is this best practice? No. Do I feel this is the right thing to do? No. No, I don't feel it is.
I mentioned this yesterday, and I won't spend too much more time speaking to this. I really believe in my heart that there is a better way to go, but not this way. Like I said, we're very thankful right now. Our response right now has been very good, and I'm hoping and I'm praying that we don't see any loss of life through this. I'm hoping we navigate this, and I have to respect all my colleagues' votes. We've been here just over a year, now. We all have our mandates, and we have to try to navigate through this. I really think this $8.7 million will take a step back against some of our mandate items. I think there is a better way to do this, and so, again, I want to let everyone know that I will be speaking against this motion and voting against it. I do not support this part of the motion.
Again, like what my colleague from Deh Cho said, it's just the specific allocation for the COVID secretariat. This $8.7 million is what I have an issue with. The rest, I'm okay with. With that, I have nothing else to say. Marsi cho.
Thank you. To the motion. Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Again, I'll repeat myself from what I said last night. As an Inuvialuit beneficiary living in my home town of Tuktoyaktuk, 17 miles away from Tuktoyaktuk is Kittegaryumiut. We lost 3,000 people in the pandemic in the 1920s. I think that, when COVID-19 first came out, we didn't know what we were doing. Everybody was in a panic. Everybody tried to do their best. Our government tried to do their best. Now, we have to do our best in regard to the safety of the people of the Northwest Territories, and for me, the money, 8 million bucks, one life saved is worth it. I don't care about the money. I care about the safety; the safety of my people. You know as well as I do that our hamlets, our communities, tried to shut down the highway going into Tuktoyaktuk, into Inuvik. They had to try roadblocks and things like that. They were so worried about the pandemic coming because, growing up in Tuktoyaktuk, you hear stories about those days, about what happened. It's different. When you say "pandemic," or something like that, it scares people, especially our elders. That's the most important for me, is our elders and our youths.
You look back, and we have to try to get through this together as 19 Members. It's not the government. It's all our responsibility to get through this. We have to get through this pandemic. It's a new world in regard to this COVID-19 world, and it's the safety or our constituents that's our priority. For the COVID secretariat, I will be supporting it. I have all the respect in the world for every one of these Members in this House, Madam Speaker, and everybody has to make their own choice upon their own judgment. When I look at this, it's bigger than that. It's so big, we just hope it doesn't hit our communities. I will be in support of it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Member. To the motion. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Yesterday, I was not able to speak on this matter, so I will now. With respect to the budget, I'm in support of it. There are questions with the funds being spent on the COVID secretariat; however, we always hear people say, "How much is a life worth?" Well, I say, "Is the life of somebody who passes away from COVID worth more than somebody who is an addict, or vice versa?" Really, all lives are important, and in this instance, we have something in front of us that could have really caused devastation. We have addictions, which is devastating in itself, but we focused on this one. We're talking $8 million up until the end of this fiscal year coming from the GNWT, but we moved so quickly on the secretariat; we moved quickly on COVID. Money was thrown at us from the federal government; we threw money in. What I would like to see is that we do the same thing with addictions. If we could move that fast on addictions, we can make a difference.
In Hay River, as well, we've had three or four young people pass away with respect to whether it was drug-related, or there is always something like that involved. Nobody wants to see anyone pass away, old or young, for any reason whatsoever. For me, I will support the motion. We can move money around. We can move it, but if somebody passes away from COVID, what do we tell their family? "Well, we saved some money. We moved it to something else. Maybe we could have saved that life, but we will never know."
What we need to do is we have to look forward. Let's look and try to make an impact on fighting addictions and fighting homelessness. Those are the things that kill people. Like the Member for Monfwi said, he goes for coffee or goes downtown. It's the same thing in Hay River. When I get home, guys are there. They're waiting for me, and they're looking for coffee; they're looking for money, whatever. Or sometimes they just want to talk to you, as well. Like I think I've told the Minister of health is that, at the end of the day, if we don't get a day shelter for these guys, what I'm going to do is: I'm going to move all the furniture out of my office and turn it into a day shelter until we get one if that's what we have to do because it's not just this government that has to take responsibility. It's everybody. All the residents of the NWT have to participate in this, and they do, in some sense. A lot of people, they give food. A lot of people will provide shelter. A lot of people will go and pay for fuel bills for people. They will pay their power bills because they know they're down. I think that it's just not on this government to make change. It's everybody, and that's what I look for. I look for participation, and I look for people to help out. In Hay River, we have that. We still have people on the streets, and when I hear that they're sleeping under the stairs or something at the old town hall, that's not good. We have to change that.
The other thing that came up, as well, in discussions, and I talked to the Minister of the Power Corporation of that, as well, is the issue of arears and limiters. To me, here we are; we're spending this money. Yet, we have people out there that maybe owe us $2 million or whatever. There's not a lot of them. I asked her, "Why don't we just find that money? We should try to find that within government and give those people a leg up and pay those bills for them because that amount of money means a lot to some people." Those types of things, and with limiters, that's the other thing, is why do we even? People go throughout the winter thinking that this might happen, hanging over their head day after day after day. Wake up not knowing if you're going to have power or not, so that's a problem.
The other thing, as well, is in Hay River where we have very limited public housing, what we're finding now is that people are actually moving in with people who are in housing. Of course, when that happens policies are getting broken and tenant agreements are being broken. Everybody's getting threatened to get thrown out of there, but they have no other option. What do we do? I would ask the Minister to consider making sure that if that has to happen, somebody's fleeing an abusive situation, so they move in with somebody that's living in public housing for safety. Let them be there. People say, "It's not safe because there are too many in the house." I grew up with seven sisters, a brother, and then my mom and dad were there. We had a two-bedroom house, and I'm still standing here today. I think I turned out okay.
We're getting so carried away with policies and legislation and liability, and it just goes on and on where we can't really do anything and we can't help people. I don't know. I look at what we do, and it's frustrating because I can see answers out there. Coming from the private sector, I just like to go and do stuff and get it done. Again, when it comes to the secretariat, that money is there. We're going to vote on it. More likely it's going to pass, but at the same time, I would ask this government: let's get a plan together. An action plan, not a strategy, we need an action plan to combat addictions, combat homelessness, and the real matter that will save people's lives and make their lives better. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you. To the motion. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I don't have anything new to add really to what my colleagues here have been already saying. I care a lot about public safety. It's something I've always incorporated into my work, and I will still continue to do so. At a young age, I even took an oath to protect it. I hear and see the need in this territory, and do I think that this additional money that's going to be spent is going to improve the safety or protect us better from COVID? No, I don't. I am also often hit up for money to help people fill their fuel tanks or buy groceries for their children. I'm sure it's something everybody in this room also experiences on a regular basis. While it's hard to stand up and say that I don't support this because as a result, some of the initiatives I really believe in, like the policing initiative, I will be voting against them, as well. However, how it's presented, I can't in good faith vote now to increase government employment given the needs of our territory. As I said yesterday, a couple million dollars that's earmarked for a few managers' salaries and office space, not when I look around and see that people don't even have proper housing. I won't be supporting this supplementary. Thanks.
Thank you. To the motion. Member for Thebacha.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand before you today to say I support this supplementary. I support this supplementary because the mayor of the town of Fort Smith, the chief of the Salt River First Nation, and the president of the Fort Smith Metis Nation are all in support of this supplementary. They are in support of the secretariat. I was in contact with them as early as yesterday. Safety of individuals and a community and the Northwest Territories is extremely important. I think you have to look down South, and you see how things changed in the second wave. A lot of the Aboriginal communities were affected in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, BC, and across Canada. If one case got into the communities in the Northwest Territories and starts spreading, we are in major problems here. I think that the safety of all communities, regional centres, and the capital are important.
As a former Aboriginal leader for twelve years, and I've been in that Aboriginal arena for twelve years, and the one thing I learned from the leaders of the Aboriginal people is that they care about everybody, not only themselves. It is very humbling to be a leader of an Aboriginal group. I try to bring that here, and I'm very strong on the issues. I feel that I'm very strong to my convictions, and this is one of my convictions. I had decided this a long time ago, but I had to make sure that everybody was in favour of it from my constituency of Thebacha. For every person that I asked, whether they be younger or from the school or from a senior or to the church groups, they are all in favour of keeping our community safe. Therefore, I stand before you and I stand before everybody in this House with my conviction that I will be supporting this bill. Thank you.
Thank you. To the motion. Does the Minister of Finance wish to conclude the debate? Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. First and foremost, I appreciate all Members here speaking up and voicing their concerns and their opinions here. This is what our House is about: it's about working and hearing everybody's concerns. I'm going to speak about my concern that I had. I have staff that were from the Department of Lands and ENR that are working lots and lots of overtime. Other departments are in the same boat. When we talk about the safety of our individuals, we had people that were driving to borders, the Alberta border, again working 10, 12 hours, then coming back. I brought it to the Cabinet, and I said, "Look, we need to do something about this." I personally, I can speak for myself, I said, "We need to deal with this. We need to look at how we're going to combat this, how we're going to organize this and how we're going to do it."
Is it perfect? No, but we're working to improve it as each day goes on. We have conversations in Cabinet, we listen to our colleagues from the other side. There are some challenges out there. I'm not going to deny that, but this is the reality. We're in a pandemic, and we need to make some hard decisions. We came up with this secretariat to help residents. We talk about the safety of Northerners. My colleague from Nunakput talks about 3,000 people who died from a pandemic previously. Am I happy with that? No, because that's where my kids' ancestry comes from. I do not want to look at any pandemic that's going to take people's lives away from them.
I struggle; I've been challenged with border control. In Nahendeh riding, we have two gates to stop people from coming in. There are people that bypass that. The Member from Deh Cho talked about people that came and went away. Yes, we hear about it. I deal with it daily. I work with my colleagues to try to get this addressed and try to fix. It is money well spent for people's lives, and that's what we've got to look at. It was a hard decision, lots of struggles for myself. I could probably say for everybody here when they're talking about it. It's about the residents of the Northwest Territories and how we're going to deal with it. I am going to stand up and support this, Madam Speaker. Thank you.
Thank you. To the motion. Does the Minister of Finance wish to conclude the debate?
Thank you, Madam Speaker. The total costs so far of the COVID-19 pandemic is $175 million. The COVID secretariat is just one part of that. We have already received more than half of that, over $92.5 million from the federal government. The federal government has been a good partner with this fight. Every province and territory is fighting this fight. The COVID secretariat is just one -- I'd say, it's quite a small part of what we're doing, Madam Speaker.
Whether we call it a secretariat or whether you call it a task force or whether you call it the COVID umbrella, it really doesn't matter. What matters is the work that they're doing. Right now, Madam Speaker, it is the primary response message that we have to implement the orders of the Chief Public Health Officer. The Chief Public Health Officer is the person in this territory who is best placed to model, to understand, to figure out the evolving nature of a disease that is sweeping across the world. She is the one that's at the front end at the front line of figuring out how to respond to something that no one has ever been asked to respond to before. The COVID secretariat is one small thing that we are doing here to help implement the orders that she's bringing out in the best interests of the health and safety of all the residents of the Northwest Territories.
Back in March, when it was a crisis, an emergency that everyone was having to respond to, that is when the work began. Madam Speaker, at that time, developed the response that included the isolation centres because we didn't want anyone coming back from away and elsewhere in Canada or internationally, even at the time, coming back and going into a small community where there aren't health centres, where there is overcrowding, where people have low health indicators. Those are all risk factors for COVID-19. No one is not alive to that. We're extremely alive to that, and that is exactly why we have the isolation centres; why we have the border restrictions; why we have the border patrols; why we have the patrols at the airports because we can't let this disease get into small communities or out into regions where it would potentially have devastating consequences.
And initially, as my colleague has just mentioned, Madam Speaker, it was individually department by department, staff person by staff person being asked to do things outside of what their job descriptions were in order to be able to be on the front lines in an urgent situation. That is not sustainable, Madam Speaker. Figuring out who was doing what, putting it all together, gathering it up, the Department of Finance did bring together the actual amounts that were spent in the first few months when all of this work, all of this same work was already happening as part of our response when we were keeping COVID-19 out of the territory. For a large part, we have had very few cases, Madam Speaker.
We put all of that together. We looked at those actual numbers, and those are the numbers that inform the cost of the COVID secretariat. The projections that we have here are based on the actual costs spread across all of the departments, only now, they are being brought together. Now, we can put it out on the Department of Finance website. Now, it is transparent. Now, I can, month by month, report exactly on what the costs are because it's all been brought together. Now, we don't have to take people away from the front-line work that they're doing in other departments because they have somewhere else where they are coordinated to do that work, where we figured out which positions needed to be filled that couldn't be double filled or filled by redeployments who were then off of their other jobs. We figured that out in a coordinated way, and that is what's happening under this COVID secretariat.
Is it a best practice? Well, Madam Speaker, I don't know that anyone knows the best practice just yet. That is exactly the challenge of governing is to figure out the best practice as quickly as possible in an urgent situation to make sure that people are safe. Madam Speaker, CBC noted that, on November 3rd, in Canada, there were 71 deaths from COVID-19, yesterday. When we were debating this, there were 71 deaths in Canada from COVID-19. A week ago, there were 362 cases in Indigenous communities in Canada. This week, it's at 500. Again, reported on CBC. Madam Speaker, I am sad for my Canadian colleagues and friends and neighbours, but I am also thankful that we are not facing that level of pandemic here in the territories. Let's be honest, Madam Speaker. Some of that's just luck, but some of it is due to the response that we've had since day one, and it's a response that we want to continue.
Madam Speaker, $8.7 million is a number that's been put out there. What that is is the projected cost of just under $32 million to the end of the fiscal year, taking away what right now is the amount of federal funding that we've received that we're able to put towards a secretariat, leaves just over $8 million which would be GNWT funded. That money is not exclusively for employees. That money is meant to perform all of these different functions from border patrols to airport monitoring to the isolation centres to various contacting functions, NWT protect, as well as the communications and some policy development because we are not done in evolving our response. Just as the disease is evolving, of course, the response has to evolve.
As was made plain very much yesterday, there must be things that we do all the time to make the response better, to make it more tailored, and hopefully to reduce the costs that we're seeing here, to change the way that people are being asked to respond, to change the communities where people might be able to self-isolate, to look at the different options for self-isolation, to look at the costs of it. We can't do that on the sides of our desk. We need someone to look at that and actually try to come up with a best practice. That's part of what's included in that $8 million, Madam Speaker. Will we go out and try to get more money from the federal government? of course. How many times we've answered questions on every one of our departments that we are constantly engaging. COVID-19 has been an opportunity. There have been weekly calls between many of the departments and federal ministers and FPT. The federal provincial territorial ministers across Canada are all getting together to share our ideas, to share our best practices because everyone is trying to figure out what to do.
I can't see into the future, Madam Speaker. If I could, I would know when and where the disease might arrive, but I can't. I would know, perhaps, how the pandemic would unfold, but I don't. Madam Speaker, what we can do is continue to bring about the implementation of the orders that our Chief Public Health Officer is working constantly, along with her colleagues from all of Canada, to help us reduce the risk of this disease here within the territory. We're going to continue to do that, Madam Speaker. We're going to continue to do that in a way that is responsible. We're going to continue to do it in a way that is transparent. We're going to continue to report on those costs. We're going to continue to report when there can be a change, if we can, in fact, save money because of an evolution in the way we are responding.
Madam Speaker, the materials that are before you today in this supplementary that include that COVID secretariat includes so many other things. While we might want to parse out and say, "It's the COVID secretariat that's at issue," the simple fact is that, at this point, it's not just the COVID secretariat. We have to respond to the economic crisis that's been created as a result. We have to respond to the educational crisis that's been created as a result. Those things are also in the supplementary appropriation. The safe restart for the school funding, some of that is here, Madam Speaker; school contributions, contributions to student financial assistance is here; airline supports are in here for the GRIT program for ITI is here; regional relief for local businesses, that's all here, Madam Speaker. Sports organizations for youth, that is here, too. It is more than just the COVID secretariat. It is about now becoming a social, economic response that we have to have in addition to the health response that we've had to have.
Madam Speaker, I will also be voting, not surprisingly, in support of this supplementary because I know, Madam Speaker, that these numbers have been costed out carefully. I know that we are going to do our best, as I've said, to continue to be transparent about them, to do even better with our communications of them. While not everybody might support the measures, and they are hard and they are not easy for anyone to follow, it's not pleasant. The pandemic is causing tremendous strain on everyone.
Madam Speaker, as we've gone out, engaged and explained, explained what the secretariat thing is, the work that it's doing that it is actually the work that is implemented in the orders that have kept us safe, support has grown. Support has grown among Indigenous governments and communities and businesses. Not everyone will support it, Madam Speaker, but that is not the job of governing. The job of governing is to try to do your best; to try to do your best to maintain the health and the safety of the people of the Northwest Territories; to ensure the stability of the Northwest Territories; to ensure the stability, as much as possible, of our response to COVID-19, so that we can do our best to continue to keep it at bay. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
The Member for Yellowknife South, the Member for Range Lake, the Member for Yellowknife Centre, the Member for Kam Lake, the Member for Frame Lake, the Member for Yellowknife North, the Member for Nahendeh, the Member for Sahtu, the Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, the Member for Hay River North, the Member for Hay River South, the Member for Thebacha, the Member for Nunakput.
Thank you. All those opposed, please stand.
The Member for Great Slave, the Member for Deh Cho, the Member for Monfwi, the Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
All those abstaining, please stand. The results of the recorded vote: 13 in favour, four opposed, zero abstentions. The motion is carried.
---Carried
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Orders of the day for Thursday, November 5, 2020, at 1:30 p.m.:
Prayer
Ministers' Statements
Members' Statements
Returns to Oral Questions
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Question 358-19(2), Long-Term Care Facility
Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery
Acknowledgements
Oral Questions
Written Questions
Returns to Written Questions
Replies to Commissioner's Address
Petitions
Reports of Committees on the Review of Bills
Reports of Standing and Special Committees
Tabling of Documents
Notices of Motion
Motions
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Motion 22-19(2), Appointment of Law Clerk
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Motion 23-19(2), Appointment of Sole Adjudicators
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Motion 24-19(2), Changes to Committees Membership
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Motion 25-19(2), Extended Adjournment of the House to February 3, 2021
Notices of Motion for First Reading of Bills
First Reading of Bills
Second Reading of Bills
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
- Committee Report 6-19(2), Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures Report on Remote Sittings
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Minister's Statement 77-19(2), National Housing Co‐Investment Fund
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Tabled Document 165-19(2), Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Committee Report 1-19(2): Report on Long-Term Post-Pandemic Recovery - Recommendations to the GNWT
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Tabled Document 166-19(2), Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Committee Report 2-19(2): Report on Long-Term Post-Pandemic Recovery - Recommendations to the GNWT
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Tabled Document 167-19(2), Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Committee Report 3-19(2): Report on Long-Term Post-Pandemic Recovery - Recommendations to the GNWT
Report of Committee of the Whole
Third Reading of Bills
Orders of the Day
This House stands adjourned until Thursday, November 5, 2020, at 1:30 p.m.
---ADJOURNMENT
The House adjourned at 5:10 p.m.
