Caroline Wawzonek

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Internet service providers and Internet rates are quite heavily regulated in the Northwest Territories by CRTC. Certainly, we do have, at the Department of Finance, ongoing discussions with the major players in the industry here, but as I say, a lot of that is going to depend on the work that is being done with CRTC and not with GNWT specifically. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the projections obviously do get -- I think the Members will appreciate that they are being done continually, and particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, they were being redone every so many months. That will continue throughout the time of the pandemic because the pandemic has impacted on the government's position quite significantly, which is in no short order why we wound up with increasing the borrowing limit when we did in the first place.

I think at this point, Madam Chair, it would be appropriate to say that we will continue to do those updates...

Thank you, Madam Chair. By doing this joint project, that is really meant to alleviate both sides of a concern, which is to ensure that staffing processes remain fair and compliant with best practices and with transparent processes, while also ensuring the expertise within the client department, in this case the health department. Hopefully, if the unit does achieve the targets that are being set to increase recruitment and retention of healthcare workers, then perhaps that is a question that I will be coming back to in time as to, if this is, in fact, successful, what that might mean for...

As I said, there is right now an expression of interest open really to explore what options there might be, to see whether it's possible or how it would be possible to increase and improve cellular coverage on the highways in the Northwest Territories. Once we have that information in hand, I will certainly be sharing it with my colleagues in the Legislative Assembly, with a view to seeing, again, what we can do to improve coverage for all of the territorial highways. However, again, the first step is to get the information for that first stretch and to see what that can bring to us as some...

Madam Chair, if I could perhaps suggest the deputy minister is a better place to explain the supplementary reserve, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Only to acknowledge that this isn't in the priority document that we came up with as a government or as a collective 19 Members, but certainly all of us have to assist constituents. Those of us in Cabinet have to receive the requests from constituents, so the challenges being discussed or presented by the Member are not lost, I don't think, on anyone here, and they are certainly not lost on me. As I said, I also agree that the eServices work is very exciting and, yes, it was not by accident that I wanted to make sure that we had the chief information officer here...

I have confirmed that is correct. That's not in the document here before us. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That item, Madam Chair, falls under the women's directorate and the Minister responsible for the Status of Women. I expect that the committee's position on the best location for that is, in fact, that it should be over in the executive and not in finance, Madam Chair. Meanwhile, it just so happens that, as Minister responsible for the Status of Women, I can say that there is work under way on the act, and I can commit to getting confirmation of whether or not it will be on target to be introduced as planned. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Finance is well aware that the territories, including the Northwest Territories, are certainly behind some of our other provincial colleagues, anyways, in Canada in terms of providing cellular coverage on highways. In being aware of that, we are beginning to take steps to find out what options there may be available, to explore what can be done to expand the coverage. The simple reality, Mr. Speaker, is there is no private market for this. There is no way of earning any sort of revenue or profit on this. For this to go forward, there would have to be...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Fiscal Responsibility Policy really doesn't speak to operations and maintenance budgets of any of the infrastructure projects that are at issue. It speaks to the funding of the infrastructure project itself, so it wouldn't be reflected in the operation of the asset, whether that is a P3 asset or otherwise. Obviously, it seems that perhaps there needs to be a further briefing or discussion around the Fiscal Responsibility Policy and what it includes, but the fact that it doesn't include the operations of an asset that happens to be a P3 is not, I would suggest, the...