Member Yellowknife South

Deputy Premier
Minister of Finance
Minister Responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation
Minister Responsible for Strategic Infrastructure, Energy and Supply Chains

Caroline Wawzonek was first elected to the 19th Legislative Assembly in 2019 as the Member for Yellowknife South. Ms. Wawzonek served as Minister of Justice,  Minister of Finance, Minister responsible for the Status of Women and the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. In 2023, Ms. Wawzonek was acclaimed to the 20th Legislative Assembly and returned to Executive Council as Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance, Minister of Infrastructure and the Minister Responsible for the NWT Power Corporation.
 
Ms. Wawzonek holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Calgary (2000) and a law degree from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (2005). Her academic journey included language studies in China and Taiwan, as well as legal internships in the Philippines and England. Born in Calgary, AB, she has called Yellowknife home since 2007.
 
After establishing her criminal law practice post-admission to the Law Society of the NWT, Ms. Wawzonek appeared in all levels of NWT courts and engaged in circuit court travel. She later joined Dragon Toner, expanding her practice to general litigation and administrative law until becoming a member of the 19th Assembly.
 
Since 2007, she has taken on leadership roles in the legal community, including the presidency of the Law Society of the Northwest Territories (LSNT), section chair for the Canadian Bar Association Northwest Territories Branch (CBA-NT), and committee membership in various working groups. Her community involvement extends to appointments in multiple Yellowknife organizations, and she received a national award in 2017 for her contributions to Canadian Women in Law.
 
Ms. Wawzonek, a mother of two, enjoys running, paddleboarding, and time outdoors.
 

Committees

Caroline Wawzonek
Yellowknife South
Member's Office

Yellowknife NT X1A 2L9
Canada

P.O. Box
1320
Extension
12177
Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance, Minister of Infrastructure, and Minister Responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation

Statements in Debates

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 155)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, that is correct, that it would be paid leave for those who are subject to the evacuation order. Thank you.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 155)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to hope that the decisionmaking is not impeded by the lack of having a specific region. There are superintendents in the region for certainly  I know ITI as well as other departments have superintendents there. And we also, of course, have, this is an entity that is a selfgoverning region and there is a Tlicho child and family services, Tlicho services agencies, so there are a number of organizational structures that are distinct and unique to the Tlicho region. If there's some specific areas where that is not working well, I would love to talk...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 155)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the report at issue here was discontinued after 2008. It was extremely labour intensive and didn't necessarily capture all of the procurement that was taking place. It involved a lot of manual recoding of things which really  you know, having to manually recode (a) takes a lot of effort and isn't always the most accurate. What we have replaced it with most recently, within this last year, Mr. Speaker, is the contract reporting dashboard which does breakdown current years by type of contract, by region, by jurisdiction, by the nature of the contract. But I...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 155)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think we've mentioned Bear Facts here before. It is the primary tool for communication for all staff within the public service. And on May the 15th, we did put out a fairly detailed note here stating that employees required to evacuate, both Hay River, K'atlodeeche, may use emergency leave pursuant to the conditions in the collective agreement. So I certainly would hope that there's been no misunderstanding or lack of awareness of it, but I'm happy to have the chance to raise it again here in the House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 155)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that probably falls more within the Department of Executive and Indigenous Affairs. I can certainly, from at least the perspective of Finance only, say that right now the organization of the different regions, with superintendents and associated administrative responsibilities, certainly would involve a reorganization of various, you know, each department's organizational charts, each department's reporting hierarchies. So there are some administrative barriers to doing it. That doesn't mean that this can't be done. It's certainly been done before, but it's...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 154)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, emergency leave is available to public servants during an evacuation. This is paid leave. It does not draw down from other leave banks. And if an employee is being asked to take some other form of leave, Mr. Speaker, they should be discussing that with their supervisor or raising it in appropriate ways. If necessary, it come through MLA, it can come to me, but they should be on emergency leave with pay. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 154)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess I don't know what the lines are of communication that look to have been breached but, Mr. Speaker, the job of officials in ITI is to be in direct contact with fishers all around the lake. And I would expect them to continue to be in contact with fishers all around the lake. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 154)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Fish Revitalization Strategy from back in 2017 speaks to these exact challenges. Unfortunately, rather than seeing production go up from the time of 2017, production has only continued to go down. We are nowhere near hitting our quota on the lake, and it certainly is going to impact the fish plant. There's no secrets to that, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, we need to work with the fishers. We want to ensure that they know that we're working actively to make sure that we are not going to remain under FFMC forever. There's different pathways to get there...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 154)

Yes, Mr. Speaker; absolutely, Mr. Speaker, access to quality, available, affordable, reliable, competitive, internet telecommunications, absolutely that increases economic reconciliation. Mr. Speaker, there's I could stop there but this is an opportunity I know there's times where our federal government counterparts are listening. I know they follow what we say. I hope the CRTC follows what we say here because that is an absolute truth. We're trying to do our part. We need to have private sector involved. We need the federal government to be involved. These are major investments, major...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 154)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, having more competition certainly is one way, traditionally and historically, that improves affordability in a marketplace. It does, of course, rely on there being the infrastructure to provide the options to the market and that is still an area where we are challenged here in the Northwest Territories. As far as the all that said, Mr. Speaker, this is exactly what we've been expressing at CRTC for some time, trying to balance between the fact that we need significant investments to support infrastructure in a marketplace that wouldn't necessarily have the...