Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, indeed, all managers do go through the management series program. That is mandatory. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is, right now, a onetime programming. It is we're part of I missed the name earlier, Tourism Relief Fund, which came out from the federal government and is extended through to the end of next year. I do hope that it's fully subscribed. That is certainly the point.

Whether we'll need anything further, you know, I can't say. Again, hoping we don't continue to need any sorts of relief or recovery.

The next stage of tourism funding would probably be looking over to the Tourism 2025, which is part of ITI's Main Estimates. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, can I turn that to the deputy minister, please.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I've had it described to me that when the decision was made, before my time here, to purchase the property, that it was thought to, in fact, be a good maneuver and, indeed, that it would in fact not have difficulty being sold. So regardless of that, at this point I will still note, Mr. Speaker, that the two properties, although being 140 kilometres apart, were jointly owned previously. They remain high grade Tungsten properties. Geopolitical events and the critical minerals and metals discussions suggest that there may well be a good opportunity right now...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, at this point, there's certainly the, you know, expectation based on what was being done and what was being tracked over the last few months, the last few months of where COVID was at. You know, this is expected to get us through that transition. I'm hesitating because of course I don't think anyone really knows what may or may not happen, say, this fall. You know, there's certainly a hope that with the vaccination rates that we have, with the availability of vaccinations for youth, for boosters, etcetera, that we won't be back in any kind of significant...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So yes, you'll recall the Fiscal Responsibility Policy requires that 50 percent of our capital budget is funded through supplementary or from operations surpluses. So yes, if there's less surplus available, then there'd be less money to spend in compliance with that policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with respect to any sort of sale program or process that may be underway, it would not be unusual for that to involve confidential discussions. And if that's the case, it's very difficult, if not impossible, considering legal obligations, to be displaying that out publicly.

That said, Mr. Speaker, we are a consensus government and there's been a lot of work done in this Assembly in terms of understanding better how to communicate between Ministers and MLAs when it comes to the development of legislation and the development of regulations, and perhaps there's...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, so again, this is a program that was cost shared with the federal government, and it was part of funding that was being delivered through COVID19 and the pandemic when airline services across the country were facing fairly dire straits, when there was the sort of significant and immediate shut downs of airline services and impacts to them.

The portion that we received was to help maintain air service costs across the Northwest Territories. The federal government wasn't, you know, supporting which you know, based on where ownership might be. They were...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So Madam Chair, this year we had set aside not set aside but had created a supplementary reserve of $35 million. We are down to 10.754 after this.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we don't have substantiation of amounts in time for the spring session. I don't know that it was ever anticipated that we would have had the kind of substantiation necessary to make it into the spring session. You might recall that last year with the floods, a special warrant was done and had it brought in for fall. So, you know, I certainly don't want residents to think that simply because of the timing of session that funding won't be available. The Disaster Assistance Policy was updated such that the cap is now at $240,000, and that doesn't change based...