Shauna Morgan

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do think that that is an important step, so I appreciate the Minister taking that back to the working group.

I want to turn now to the Slave Geological Province corridor planning. So the Minister mentioned that this one is actually only 75 percent federal funding. Can the Minister explain to us how much of the GNWT's own money we're using for the planning, both this year and over the course of the -- is it four or five years that we have federal funding; how much is the GNWT spending of our own money on this? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. So while the government's strategies around early learning have focused in recent years on the establishment of junior kindergarten and child care programs, what has the department been doing to support literacy and language skills for children zero to five through supports to parents and families? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, I know that I'll just be continuing to learn about the capital planning process and, you know, certainly my concern is that we ensure that we are able to address all of the most severe most urgent life safety issues and we don't have projects competing with each other that are all at that level, and that we also have enough money to ensure that we're taking care of our assets and preventing sort of disasters or breakdowns or life safety issues down the road. So I'll just continue to have this on my mind but keep learning about the process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on a heartwarming note to end the week, I'd like to shine a spotlight on the transformative work that the NWT Literacy Council has been doing in communities across the territory. Their program Reading Together provides opportunities for fathers who are incarcerated to connect with their children through bedtime stories. They get to choose a book that their children would like, create a reading kit to send to their kids, including new pajamas, stuffies, and a toothbrush, and then the dad gets to make a recording of him reading the book and sending bedtime...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I guess my area of confusion -- and maybe the Minister can clear this up -- is that on the one hand it seems to be the place where projects that keep getting deferred end up that aren't necessarily top of the priority list but, on the other hand, we see that some of these projects are there because it's a life safety issue. And so I don't know how both of those can be true. Can the Minister explain? Thank you.

I definitely appreciate that. So when the department is considering new highways, new capital highway projects, is the data about how much it takes to maintain and repair a highway each year -- is that taken into account in terms of predicting future O and M and capital costs for a highway; is that taken into account before embarking on a new highway capital project? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. When this project was thought up, was there alternatives that were identified in a, you know, project proposal in terms of how else they challenges might be addressed? And does that document still exist somewhere? I know that it's -- we're a little bit further along into the project now but I'm just trying to understand how a project like this gets ranked as sort of top priority as a major new capital building in our territorial budget when it seems that there are alternatives to building a $32 million building. But were other possible solutions to those challenges...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister explain which kind of highway repairs would fall under capital versus which might fall under operations and maintenance? We see a number of different highway projects listed here under asset management. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So that's good news. I'm also wondering if in a project like this where, like it's multi-year and then year by year either we realize we need to increase the scope, like the replacement of driver's licensing system, my understanding was that it initially was supposed to be improvements and then later on decided well, we better replace the whole system. So if a project is sort of year after year, either the cost turned out to be way greater or the scope is increasing, to what extent do we have off ramps for a project like this where there might be an option to just like...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I have, well, first a question about the courts modernization project. It looks like the budget for that project has more than doubled since it was first proposed. Like, this is a three-year project and -- well, I guess the first question is the current estimate of the budget over the three years, do we have any assurance that that's going to be the final cost, or do we expect that costs might still sort of increase further beyond what the estimated budget is now? Thank you, Mr. Chair.