Caroline Wawzonek

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 , 20th Assembly, 1st Session (day 30)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate that question. NTPC is very conscious of the fact that they play such a critical role in the Northwest Territories. There's a lot happening on this front. Right now they are working on a continuous improvement initiative which is meant to help manage their project management -- or to improve rather the project management. So, and coming from that one of the things is to look at the Inuvik project and do a bit of a lessons learned, do a bit of a post review of what went wrong and what could be done better. A lot of things went right. It...

Debates of , 20th Assembly, 1st Session (day 30)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there was a number of challenges that arose in 2019 or post 2019 where budgets and projects that were in the past Assembly -- actually two Assemblies ago now, then run up against COVID. There was a number of delays and as really I think everyone out there, whether it's government procurement or private procurement, saw increases in the huge numbers in terms of what kinds of impacts fuel had, inflation had, interest rates had, labour market challenges had, and the government is no stranger to that. So what we saw across the private sphere certainly impacted...

Debates of , 20th Assembly, 1st Session (day 30)

That's definitely a little outside of my wheelhouse, Mr. Speaker. And I'm honestly just going off of a briefing I happen to have about where I was present with the Minister for housing. So I don't want to commit on her behalf. I know that she feels it's a priority. Again, brought that initiative forward to really help this Assembly to understand how things happen there. So I will commit to getting a number -- or to getting a date, and we'll make sure that that comes back to the House. Thank you.

Debates of , 20th Assembly, 1st Session (day 30)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to say it again. At this point, the conversation has only just begun. So we've put Ottawa on notice that we're going to be coming to them in order to make this request, that there's more information coming. Our offices here in the Department of Finance and Fiscal Policy are looking at what kind of options we are going to be looking at, what kinds of needs we might have, what is on the capital plan for the next several years, what is in in the operational plan for the next several years. Mr. Speaker, if the Member doesn't believe me when I answered...

Debates of , 20th Assembly, 1st Session (day 30)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Housing NWT does indeed, it's correct, take under -- undertake, rather, its own capital needs assessment process and that then -- and, frankly, starting from their own LHO. So each individual LHO is feeding up into the Housing NWT's system and then ultimately those reports are coming forward to financial management board when there's an ask put forward to support additional funding based on that work that was happening within the housing LHO to Housing NWT and then to determine what the needs might be. So it still is part of the total fiscal financial...

Debates of , 20th Assembly, 1st Session (day 30)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, about two years ago we began a very extensive process of having the fiscal responsibility policy reviewed. That process was undertaken with the Members of the House during the 19th Assembly, and part of what we did at that time was to review and to include an expressed threshold in our own policy after which point we would then be obligated to go to Ottawa. By doing that, it put an obligation on us. It was an obligation that all parties in this House, and anyone really within government would know, that once we hit the threshold of being within $120 million...

Debates of , 20th Assembly, 1st Session (day 30)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's a lot of conversations that happen in this House. There's a lot of communications that happen in this House. There are briefings that are done in a consensus government confidentially to Members and through caucus processes which we then don't speak about, really to protect everybody's ability to have those conversations. So I guess if I can look back and discuss with the Members through their -- what maybe was missed, what was maybe not heard, what was maybe not seen, to ensure that firstly the processes that we do have are effective, and that the...

Debates of , 20th Assembly, 1st Session (day 30)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm very happy to say that all of our O and M contracts for the region are -- for the Dempster region are now in place, they're being operationalized. The ITH O and M contract is still being finalized. We spent a lot of effort on this one this summer and have certainly been approaching it, I think, from a view of some relationship building with contractors in the region. I do expect to have an update on that this week, and I'm looking forward to it being in place before the freeze up. Thank you.

Debates of , 20th Assembly, 1st Session (day 29)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm quite pleased to talk about the clean energy investment tax credit because it is an interesting thing that there's an opportunity here for the North, for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, to be seeking this tax credit except that we have to make a nonbinding commitment to be on net-zero.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to make that commitment. I'm happy to simply make the commitment, but it certainly is going to be pretty challenging for the Northwest Territories or, frankly, probably any part of the non-connected to the North American energy grid...

Debates of , 20th Assembly, 1st Session (day 29)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is certainly not an easy one, and I want to acknowledge that from the get-go, that the efforts to deal with what became a crisis situation this summer interrupts the ability to plan for the future. And we're well aware that we need to get out of the cycle of responding to crisis in order to actually plan in a careful way to deliver the services we need.

Working towards a place where integrated case management which has become integrated service delivery can be expanded, expanded out of Yellowknife and, in fact, even expanded within Yellowknife, those...