Robert Hawkins

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sometimes part of the job requires a person to be nimble as we listen to the budget, certainly some of the answers, hence I am going to move a motion with respect to this line item. I move that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, corporate management, operations expenditure summary, 20242025 Main Estimates, be reduced to $12,201,000. And I'll speak to the motion. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister talked about the navigators at length. So maybe she could explain the business case as to why they are there and specifically how they're going to help individuals get to where I think where we hope they're going to back into the working or education world or whatever is appropriate as it fits appropriately with the individual. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I mean, by that philosophy, we would have a trades deputy minister because we support trades or a teachers deputy minister because we want to see more teachers or like-minded thinking. I mean, so why can't it work with managers or program people? I'm not convinced in any way a senior executive needs to do this position in nothing's been sold to me as opposed to if you really want languages, why do you need another upper echelon bureaucrat? Because ultimately the other question to it is is it already staffed? Thank you.

I know, I know, that's okay, I'll never tire.

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up a question right off of my good colleague from Monfwi who was talking about tracking information. And she brought up a really good point about what type of information is being tracked by the department. And I suspect the Minister may not give every answer but does the Minister and the department track anything useful with respect to ways we get people off of income support and back into the working life? Thank you.

So specifically how much is targeted to this particular position all in? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, these contracts aren't one or two years and local suppliers, whether they're born in Hay River or they were born in Yellowknife or even Inuvik, the fact is they're waiting a lifetime for them to finish. So would the Minister be willing to use her influence as Minister to go talk to these P3 contractors to ask them how we can ensure local northern businesses who supply local labour, those people live here and work here, get a chance to ensure that these businesses are able to be maintained, established, working and supporting our community as they are. So would the Minister be...

Thank you. What that just described sounded like a middle manager who worked with communities and community programs and schools. Maybe you could explain a little further, if you could, why they need to be an assistant deputy minister. That's I don't know the exact salary range but I mean, it's in the range of $200,000, I'm sure. So I mean, why couldn't a manager do this or two managers? You know, one north, one south. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's my favorite time of the day, question period. I'm always excited.

Mr. Speaker, the P3 initiative, where we've seen examples such as a hospital, have borne fruit and in the future, we may see the Slave Geological road, or certainly the Taltson, find this route. But one of the challenges of a P3 project is it falls under the management framework and, of course, it has procurement challenges, even the special panel that reviewed it saw. So when it comes to specifically for the purchase of goods by supply, my question to the finance Minister is, is can the finance...

So just to reaffirm, there's no targets or objectives formalized yet on this particular position? And if so, what's the salary range on this? Thank you.

Thank you. Would FMB have would they have had to approve the addition of this particular position? Thank you.