Caroline Wawzonek

Madam Speaker, I wish to table the following four documents: "2019 Socio-Economic Agreement Report for Mines Operating in the Northwest Territories," Economic Context of Ekati Diamond Mine Closing;" the "2019 Survey of Mining Employees: Northwest Territories Bureau of Statistics;" and "2019 Ekati Diamond Mine Socio-Economic Agreement Report." Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes. I am happy to continue to follow up on that. Actually, I do not think I mentioned it in this context. Mr. Chair, there have been quite a number of opportunities already for me to have a direct connection with the tourism association and the tourism industry. In fact, I am up in front of them tomorrow with a bit of a Q and A, so there may well be some very direct opportunity within the next 14 or so hours to have that Q and A with representatives from industry and from businesses in the industry. I take the Member's point.

I do want to defend the program a little bit...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am happy to make a monthly commitment. The Department of Finance will be collecting monthly variance reports on the COVID secretariat spending and can make those public as they are available. It does take some time, so September 30th, it does not mean we necessarily put it out on September 30th, Mr. Chair. When it does get gathered and reported and analyzed, it can take a couple of weeks, but we will be getting them and putting them out on a monthly basis. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Of course, the IBAs themselves are confidential themselves as between the industry proponents and the Indigenous governments themselves, but by continuing to be engaged with both Indigenous governments as well as with the industry, we're certainly able to help navigate the development and the strengthening of all of those levels of cooperation and collaboration. I'll go back to what I had mentioned earlier, which is the development of regional mineral development strategies which helps give a voice to individual regions so that they can better finetune what it is they want to see out of the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is growth and recovery by investing in tourism. The Member makes a good point. It's not necessarily meant at the relief stage. It's not targeting the relief stage that is, obviously, needed by a lot of businesses. There're a number of programs both within the GNWT but also from the federal government that are much more directly targeted at relief. The growth and recovery by investing in tourism has three different streams, if you will, under which individual businesses can apply. The first one is for new product development or innovation meant to be for, again...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know that the Premier's office has engaged in a pretty wide variety of conversations and engagements over the last little while, so I'd ask that we direct that to the Premier, please.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think there is a sort of general rule that I am not supposed to run down the clock, but I could easily talk about the resource sector for 20 minutes. I won't do that, Madam Speaker. The mineral resource sector is, I would say continues to be, extremely important. It's still the foundation of the economy here from the private sector and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

There are quite a number of things that are happening right now in the Department of ITI to support that sector. For example, there have been quite a number of active conversations just...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the idea behind that suggestion. I can tell the Member that the Department of Finance, and me as Minister of Finance, along, of course, with the Premier and the Minister of health, do meet regularly, weekly, with the Chief Public Health Officer. What I will do is commit to raising that at the next meeting, having brought this forward here and being responsible for bringing forward the supplemental. I will commit to raising it and getting back to the Member as to what the response is, but I am concerned that that might not be as easy as just saying that we'll...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I can give you some detail on what the funding is intended for, and then I would turn it over to the Minister of health for any update as to what may or may not have happened in the course of the pandemic. The funding under the agreement is to be used firstly for licensing of the various types of software that is required; the hardware itself, which would include iPads, iPhones, and laptops that will actually allow for that care to be provided virtually; and also support for staff in terms of setting up that hardware, training, and setting up the teleconferencing...

Madam Speaker, one of our government's guiding principles is to ensure that the expenditure of public funds maximizes economic benefits to Northerners and supports northern business. This is consistent with our long-standing commitment to support Northwest Territories businesses and grow a strong, diversified economy.

We put that commitment into practice through the Business Incentive and Manufactured Products Policies, which help ensure that government purchases are made from, or through, Northwest Territories-owned businesses wherever possible, and to leverage this investment back into our...