Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I look forward to your ruling when it does come, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the latest revision of this particular policy by the government has eked out seven Members of this side of the House spoke against it. Guess what happens? The typical going down the hall or whatever the calls are made, I mean, how do you describe this (audio) --

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just to be clear, my last question which may be similar to the last one is, is it being paid out in cash in the context of debt, or is it being paid out in cash in context of cash reserves? Thank you.

Yeah, there we go.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to direct the question at the Minister of Finance who also works as the Minister in charge of the power corp because this is an interesting needle to thread.

So with the Town of Hay River finally taking over the power in that community from Naka Power, I'm curious on is there any extended debt on the NWT Power Corp, and does it affect sort of the bottom line, and how is that paid for? I'm trying to get that sense of what did the GNWT buy if we ended up stepping up. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's been a lot of talk about this since it's been, in my humble opinion, rammed through. This policy change is quite frustrating. Many committees have already spoken against this and want it to be slowed down. Recently, one of the committees -- although I won't speak to it because it was an in-camera and confidential meeting, but I'll say it received a lot of feedback, and it was overwhelmingly concerned in the manner of the change and wanted the territorial's hiring policy stay as the affirmative action policy which we've seen for over 35 years.

Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we all know, water's very critical to day-to-day life so I won't go at length of that; I'm sure that stands as a fact on its own.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister's saying he's not aware of the problem or aware of what they're going to do, or maybe we can clarify what the Minister can do in his role as Minister of communities when the city of Yellowknife's struggling with this potential financial endeavour. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I want to -- oddly enough, I'll do it this way: I want to acknowledge the great statement by the Member for Yellowknife South about our good friend Steve Loutitt. She said much of what I would have liked to have said but it is recognition, so I'll say this to Mr. Steve Loutitt, our retiring DM of infrastructure. I want to thank him for his many years of service, and I used to call him -- sorry, I used to call him director Loutitt when he was a manager, and then guess what, he got appointed to director. Then I used to call him assistant deputy minister...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one of the challenges I see as the downtown MLA, that we see a lot of -- we'll call it social problems. And, unfortunately, police officers are being used as social workers to deal with them. But the reality is they are being called on more and more and taken away from the primary job for general public safety and general duty stuff.

Mr. Speaker, would the Premier be willing to look at some type of way of increasing the police presence in the downtown of Yellowknife? I know he doesn't instruct the chief superintendent, but he does have sway with respect to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Premier who also is the Minister of Justice.

Mr. Speaker, the last budget, we had a rollout, I believe, of nine policing officers under the Indigenous policing initiative. I'm curious as to what the actual rollout looks like, where they are -- where did they go to and where they didn't go to with respect to the nine that the territorial government was getting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, is it targeting specifically critical minerals? Is it targeting a specific sector in the mining industry? And where should we see sort of some dynamic results and when should we see them? Thank you.