Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It certainly is related to all of these other initiatives to try to remove our reliance on fossil fuels, and I am happy to say, and really it's -- I passed this torch to my colleague from ITI, Minister Cleveland, with respect to the efforts that she is now taking to indeed dust this off. She's been out all year speaking to the Japanese consulate, to PNWER, the Pacific Northwest Economic Region, speaking -- going to be coming up at the Arctic Energy and Resource Symposium in Calgary in March. I believe she's spoken to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. So...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is quite a variety of items that we do undertake within the GNWT towards improving renewable energies. For example, there are about $12.3 million put towards greenhouse gas emission reduction projects. This consists of money that goes to Arctic Energy Alliance, for instance, where they do, obviously, have renewable energy systems that they provide supports for. There's another $2 million that goes to an energy action plan which includes some programming and some supports to residents and communities around energy planning. The retrofit program in GNWT...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, firstly, the rough math of about $50 million is correct insofar as what I've listed here. There's additional money that we get from the federal government, so this is not the sum total of all that we spend. And, indeed, there is some further and additional funds that do go towards the climate change framework that is out of my colleague's department in ECC. The energy action plan or the energy strategy that is being renewed right now, some of that I can list out as being at around $2.1 million, but that does not necessarily include staffing costs that we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to lay out why I make this point of privilege this morning -- or this afternoon. There's two parts to meet the initial threshold. Question of privilege, as you know, Mr. Speaker, must be raised at the earliest opportunity. The nature of the matter described must show on its face to be a breach of privilege.

Mr. Speaker, I became aware of some accusations made last night only after the rise of House. This is my first opportunity to bring this matter forward. As to the second part of the test, I'd like to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly have a good relationship with the mayor of Yellowknife and, again, I don't want to create false hope that I have great faith that there's an easy pot for us to latch onto in the federal system right now. They, of course, are going through their own political changes, it would seem, in the next few months. But, again, certainly will commit that, at least from the Department of Infrastructure, to the extent that we are aware and do work with federal funding opportunities, again, we'll work with my colleagues here, and between myself and the Minister of MACA...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's not an independent pot of money that sits in the Department of Infrastructure. We do manage infrastructure demands that come from individual departments. So, for example, if MACA were to advance an initiative of some sort, then certainly that could come and we could support the design and the build of it, etcetera, but we don't have an independent set of money, like a federal department might, for individual projects of that nature. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the MLA for Kam Lake I think touched on majority of what I wanted to ensure was clear which, namely, is that this is, again, voting to take $5 million out a budget for a department takes 5 plus million dollars out of the budget for the department. Period. There is no guarantee as to whether or not Aurora College will or will not come back with a plan that any of us find palatable. There is no guarantee that ECE will be able to find other staff since they will not have the $5 million allocated to this initiative -- that they will have other staff to support...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe at least one, if not two or three, such requests have already come in, and we certainly will do our best to make sure we're coordinating with all colleagues here for folks -- to the best of our ability that there's not a delay or that there's an ability to be a bit flexible where feasible. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Happy to say that the silos certainly are breaking down, in my view, over the last five years or so, and I've actually been recently working with housing and MACA on other funding opportunities trying to get the federal government, quite frankly, to be more flexible with us. So certainly happy to commit to have that conversation with my colleagues if there is anything that we can do more likely to lobby the federal government as opposed to finding things that are sitting there waiting for us to come take them, but certainly happy to commit that we will do that and go...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document: Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Committee Report 19-20(1), Report on the Statutory Review of the Cannabis Legalization and Regulation Implementation Act. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.