Shauna Morgan

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So last week we announced the priorities for the 20th Assembly, and one of those was building a strong economic foundation. One major area of economic opportunity that we are currently letting slip through our fingers is remediation. Now, I want to say upfront that I don't want us to promote the idea of remediation as this economic growth opportunity that will be our longterm ticket to prosperity. I believe that would send the wrong signal to industry that we actually want them to leave a big mess behind so that we can continue spending billions in taxpayer dollars...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I will start with just one question about the agency nurse budget. And so was anything allocated for agency nurse contracts in the main budget for 20232024, or is this all coming forward in supplementary requests?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So just on the Marine Transportation Services, obviously this is kind of an eyepopping number here, $14.4 million deficit or even more deficit than was already expected. I understand that this is due to a low water year. But can the Minister give us some assurance that there will be steps taken to avoid these levels of deficit in the future.

Is there an explanation for why even okay. So the first line item that is the largest amount, CanadaNorthwest Territories Agreement to Work Together to Improve Health Care for Canadians, so why is this coming forward as a supplementary amount that wasn't planned for that is is it being something that's being done ahead of schedule, or can the Minister provide an explanation for why this is coming forward as a sup?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So this is the harbour restoration. My understanding is that this work has been the first phase of harbour restoration, which implies more phases to come in the future. Is there an estimate of what upcoming costs will be for future phases of this project? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay, so just to confirm that all costs that are retroactive have been included in these estimates that are coming forward for sups and that any forwardlooking benefits wouldn't could be captured in the main budget going forward? There wouldn't be any benefits that need to be covered between now and between now and our approving the budget for the next fiscal year?

That would be great. And that is something that I will follow up with the department.

Just finally, is part of the increase in costs that have led to this supplementary request just due to is it due to increased number of people going for outofterritory facilitybased addictions treatment or just increase in the cost of sending the same number of people to those facilities?

Thank you. That's everything for now. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much. And given that expenses have increased so dramatically over the past seven, eight years from the $19.5 million to, you know, more than double that today, so just a note that I think it's worth this government revisiting some analysis around the cost and benefits of providing more interritory supportive living services for adults, both given costs but also the benefits of keeping families together, keeping people living in NWT. So just wanted to flag that as a note related to that item.

But moving on to facilitybased addictions treatment, I have a question about how does HSS...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I appreciate that I'm putting the Minister on the spot here, but would the Minister be able to comment on like, is this the most that we've been spending on debt historically? You know, like, just to put this in historical perspective, is this significant that the amount that we've paid on debtrelated expenditures over the past year?