Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Communication between Cabinet, Regular Members, and constituents is very important if this government expects to get most of our decisions right. COVID threw a curve ball at this government's communication plan. I would ask the Premier: now that we have a year behind us and we have somewhat of a track record managing COVID, how will she ensure that we get our communications back on track between Cabinet and Regular Members? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Honourable Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do agree with the Member that communication has been difficult over the last few months. Once COVID-19 hit, lots of us could not be -- usually, we are in the House all the time. There were workplace things that had to be done. There were a lot of issues that came up. Communication is one of the hallmarks of consensus government. Before the pandemic hit, it was common to see Ministers and Members in the House on a regular basis, and both sides of the House would walk the floor and talk to Ministers or MLAs, not only about issues but just building that relationship and sometimes just going for lunch. Those things are gone, Mr. Speaker, since COVID-19, and so, like I said, we need to learn from the lessons that we have experienced over the last few months.
Communications, we are focused on our health and safety, and we kept trying to do the communications through normal processes, so we offered our list of briefings to committee all the time, not even thinking that committee did not have the opportunity to gather as much, just like we were. We realize that was a mistake, so how we are working on it going forward is: we are going to provide more briefings, written briefings, to standing committees in advance, not just waiting to say, "Can we present to you?" We will still give standing committees the opportunities to look at them and decide if they want a briefing on it or not, but we have to recognize that we are not always going to be in the House now.
I do say that we do have an open-door policy within the GNWT. A lot of Members phone me in the evenings. Pick up your phone if you need something. Give me a call. We can do virtual communications, as well, whatever it means. Life has changed for all of us, and I do not know when it's going to go back, so we have an obligation, all of us, to try to make sure that we are still reaching out to each other by the means that we have available.
This government has had a few problems with putting our message out to the public. The big one is the establishment of the Covid-19 Coordinating Secretariat. People were angry, and they let us know about it in no uncertain terms. I would ask the Premier: has she had time to reflect on this, and how will this government address the way we communicate with the public in the future?
Communication is one of the areas that, again, is often undervalued within a government and yet is so critical. It really came to the forefront when COVID-19 hit how much we relied on our communications in the GNWT. I have to be honest, Mr. Speaker. In previous years, when we have had so many priorities and so many mandates, government had to make tough choices, and often it was the decision: do we increase our communications, which we need desperately, or do we provide the program that is in our priorities and mandate? I hate to say it, but oftentimes communications took the hit.
I understand that, but our communications team is trying to do their best and is stretched thin, as I had stated earlier. However, we owe it to the public. The secretariat was a great example and a great example of how the first question: how we are going to relate with Members better? Usually in previous governments, what happened was that we would present an initial brief to the Members; we would take their feedback; we would work on it, give and take; we would go back, present it; and then we would go public. The secretariat, all in all, all of us recognize that that process was not followed properly, and we did not do a good job of communicating, myself communicating, to the public. However, I don't want to lose sight. The secretariat, we should not be focusing so much on the lack of communication.
We need to focus, on the secretariat, about what it is. It's bringing our isolation units, our border controls, our PPE, our 811, and our Protect NWT together so it's cohesive, in one department, and people can get back to work. We are working on our communications. We recognized it was a huge issue. We have spent a lot of time with our communications team to try to get better on that, and we will be coming out in the future with more communications. However, Mr. Speaker, I do want to give credit. The communications team has taken a beating over the while, and they are doing the best they can with the resources they have, as well, and I do want to say that I am proud of all of our communications people.
Mr. Speaker, various businesses throughout the NWT have been suffering financially over the last few months. Can the Premier confirm what communication strategy is in place to ensure that businesses are being heard and responded to in a timely manner?
When I first began here a year ago, I said that I wanted to engage with stakeholders more, businesses or stakeholders, a sector. I do believe that Ministers, again in the beginning, were engaging, out there talking to businesses, doing the best they could, and then COVID-19 hit, and everybody went into lockdown, right across the territory. That impacted our communications, no doubt.
However, now that we have a little bit of knowledge on where we are going, the systems we need in place to deal with COVID-19, all Ministers have been back at it and trying to engage more with stakeholders. It's not only about telling our stakeholders, businesses or whoever, what we are doing. I have been firm about that with Ministers, Mr. Speaker. It's about engaging them before we make the decisions whenever possible. Again, like I said, we kind of have a little bit of a handle on what we need for COVID-19. The secretariat will deal with that. Departments are trying to get back to normal business and meeting our mandate, and stakeholders engagement is critical within that.
Thank you, Honourable Premier. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The people of the NWT want a champion. They want a leader, and they want to hear from that leader. In this instance: the Premier. They want her to show leadership and create enthusiasm by providing relevant information in a timely manner, not only on COVID matters but, just as importantly, the economy. I ask the Premier: how will she accomplish this, that is, becoming a champion for the NWT?
Again, like I said, rushing, all of departments rushing, all of us rushing to try to figure out what we needed to do to keep our people safe, I dropped the ball on communications. Again, I did not realize how important it was. The secretariat, the issue with the secretariat brought it to the forefront. It told us that we need to do better, and so, like I said, our communications team is doing the best they can with the resources they have. However, we took the time. We stepped back after that, and we took the time. We have met with our communications team and all of Cabinet, in honesty, and we looked at how we are actually going to have more of an all-of-government communication strategy, how we are going to get out into the public more, how we are going to reach the public and work with the media more. We just finished that exercise. You will see more in the coming weeks on how we are going to actually implement our communications strategy going forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Honourable Premier. Oral questions. Member for Thebacha.
