Kieron Testart

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm just going to follow up both with the previous lines of questions. First, on land claims, when -- or land rights negotiations. When were the negotiating mandates last revised for the GNWT's side of the table? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope the Premier does because this is life and death stuff, Mr. Speaker. Can we -- can the Minister -- the Premier establish regions at least to organize ground search and rescue efforts with part-time staff responsible for their administration? These meetings could be done via Zoom. They don't have to be expensive things where we fly everyone in, but can we start to see some of those changes where we could get administrative regions in place so we can ensure there's more than just one team in Yellowknife doing work and we have teams in every region of the Northwest...

It's the best one. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier today I talked about ground search and rescue in the Northwest Territories. Can the Department of Justice indicate when they're going to provide an action plan to start implementing the recommendations provided in the review of ground search and rescue services that they commissioned themselves? Can we get a timeline and a costing -- a cost of plan so we could get these recommendations in place and improve ground search and rescue in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there a timeline that the Minister can provide when they expect to be in a position to make that decision? I'm just -- it doesn't have to be exacting but just a range of, you know, six months, a year. I'm just getting a sense because I've been working on this with my own kind of independent researcher, including Ms. Barber, for about a fyear fbnow, and -- or less than a year, but, you know, a period of time, and we've made a lot of good connections. We've done a lot of good work in pulling options together. So if I get a sense of that, again, I'm happy to continue to work...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to recognize Kate Cannell. Kate is one of the leading lights of Yellowknife Search and Rescue Team here in Yellowknife, does a lot of very good work and has been really instrumental in bringing this important area of public safety to my attention, and I thank her for that support and thank her for being here today.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am keenly interested in gaming in the Northwest Territories and how we can expand our gaming revenues in particular because there is unregulated gambling going on in -- online right now as we speak, which is unprotected, the consumers are not safe from potentially bad actors who are offering those services online. Many of these are offshore operators using dark money, etcetera. It's a very -- it's a very shady space, and we could be in the business of regulating this stuff that's already going on in our communities and bringing in some additional revenues...

Mr. Speaker, if you find yourself stranded out on the land beyond network reach and with no alternative method of communication, how would you signal for distress? Do you shout into the air or run around with your arms waving when a plane passes by? The lifesaving facts are without communication or knowledge of your whereabouts, the pilots of that passing plane would be searching for your signal in the form of threes: Three blasts of a whistle, three lit fires, even three piles of rocks, anything in the shortest of patterns with the resources you have available. In a life-threatening situation...

Thank you. Best lake. Okay, so thank you, Minister. I'm probably going to bring some questions to you tomorrow in question period around this so we can get more of that out on the floor.

So obviously, there's been a big decrease in the funding for this activity because of the extraordinary events that happened in 2023-2024. My concern is we have an imminent afteraction review that's being done by a third party that we should expect this fiscal year. Presumably it will have recommendations. How does the department intend to act on those recommendations? Because if there's no money put...

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'm going to ask about the ground search and rescue. Apparently, we do not provide support to ground search and rescue through the emergency management organization, and this is something that was one of the recommendations of the audit that was held -- or the report that was held to review things. Is there any reason why we can't make changes to the emergency management organization to bring ground search and rescue under its umbrella so we can better coordinate these efforts in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.

Thank you. So these -- so we're not anticipating that we need to maintain the same level of resource for this upcoming year I guess on -- like, hopefully we're not anticipating another evacuation or something like that. I just want to make sure, like does the department have the resources in these functions that it needs to maintain its level planning and preparedness in case there is an emergency? Thank you.