Thank you, Madam Speaker. There has no doubt been a lot of talk about the COVID-19 secretariat and its budget. I'd like to speak specifically about the isolation centres today considering they make up over half of the COVID-19 secretariat budget. I believe that there is a consensus that the spending in this area is too liberal. There are a number of ways we could save money on isolation centres, whether that's increasing the number of hub communities, shortening the isolation periods, increasing rapid testing, making sure people have kitchens so they can cook their own food instead of being catered. Each of these solutions come with some pros and cons, and I'm not suggesting we have to do all of those. My question for the Premier is: is she committed to finding some cost savings in the isolation centres portion of the COVID-19 secretariat budget? Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Member. Madam Premier.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I will start by saying yes because we've been on a roll, so I just want to say yes. There are many ways, the Member is absolutely correct. Our isolation costs are the major contributing factor to the cost of the secretariat. However, they are critical, so we are just doing that work right now. We're talking with Indigenous governments, municipal governments, other stakeholders in the communities to look at ways: do we pay for discretionary travel; do we look at RFPs or other options? The other thing, too, is: we've been working with the federal government to ask for more support for our costs related to COVID-19. We're looking at all options. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
I am glad to hear that. Considering this is $17 million projected for this fiscal and ongoing, we plan to be running these isolation centres for a number of years. They're quite big contracts. My question for the Premier is: did these isolation centre contracts go out for tender?
Again, when we first started addressing the issue of COVID-19 back in March, we didn't have time to put it out to tender. We just kind of grabbed what we could, trying to get people in safe isolation spaces. We've been operating in that. Again, one of the issues that we had when we didn't have a secretariat is all different departments were taking on different aspects of it. Now that we've formed the secretariat, Madam Speaker, we are currently actually looking at an RFP process so that we can provide better services, more efficient, and more effective services.
I completely understand that, in the midst of COVID-19, perhaps, we had to just get the isolations in place and not tender them. Now that we're looking for operating these multi-years, I really think it's important that we send them out for tender. I note there are hotels that could be interested. There are smaller hospitality places and communities. There are catering contracts. There's a lot of money flying around within the COVID secretariat right now that I believe we have to have an economic lens to.
One of the other suggestions I've heard is whether apartment rentals were considered? I know many people would, in fact, prefer to stay in an apartment where you have access to a full kitchen and it's, perhaps, a little nicer stay than two weeks in a hotel. My question for the Premier is: is apartment rentals something that we are considering and, perhaps, this would even save us money? Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Member. Madam Premier.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Just because we want to wrap it up on a good note, again, apartments are being considered. We are looking at all options, so yes, Madam Speaker, we are looking at apartments as well as all options to provide support. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Premier. Oral questions. Members, we are going to take a break, and we'll resume with the remainder of the orders of the day after that.
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