Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So following up on my Member's statement earlier and given that the government has committed to oversee an afteraction review into the 2023 wildfire season and given the blind spots that I drew our attention to in our emergency planning response so far, so my question is for the Premier. Will this government be examining how the 2023 evacuations may have inadvertently increased risk or vulnerable people's exposure to risk during displacement to southern jurisdictions and to come up with a plan for how the government and its nonprofit agency partners will identify and mitigate those risks going forward in any future emergency response?
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. One question, please, not two. So if the Premier answers the one question, then you'll have a supplementary. Mr. Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And what the Member is talking about is exactly what we need to make sure happens. We need to ensure that the things that went wrong, that we didn't prepare for, that we didn't know we needed to prepare for even, during the last number of evacuations are addressed and we do a better job going forward. The reviews will you know, maybe I'll just leave it at that and let the Member ask her other questions. I don't want to go on too much. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to know does the Premier believe that the government's own after-action reviews are well equipped to evaluate how well vulnerable populations and frontline organizations were supported during last year's evacuations, or would this be a task better suited to an independent inquiry?
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And as I said, this is work we need to do. So they are I think they're well suited. I think they're designed to get that information. The reviews are going to include feedback from NGOs, the NGOs that were participating in the evacuation that were assisting the vulnerable populations. So we need to know the issues that they ran into, and we need to figure out how the government can better assist them going forward. One of the biggest issues that I saw during the evacuations was communicating and planning. Often people didn't have a plan. There wasn't a plan in place for a lot of these things. So getting the information, finding out exactly what happened, and putting measures in to ensure that we don't make the same mistakes again is essential, and that is the purpose of these reviews. And so, yes, I believe these reviews will get that and will help us address that in the future. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And this is my final followup. What has this government done to ensure the timely reimbursement of nonprofit organizations who took on considerable expenses during the 2023 evacuations providing evacuation flights and ongoing supports to vulnerable populations given those agencies' already stretched budgets and resources?
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I want to encourage everyone, including NGOs, to look to their insurance first. That's often faster than the government than many of these expenses are often eligible. But, you know, I come from Hay River. I've been dealing with constituents who have been working through this system for a number of years now. It is not fast. Everyone would like it to be faster. We're working through that. We're trying to get policies in place that will ensure that it is faster. So we are working on it, Mr. Speaker. I can assure you of that. Thank you.
Thank you, Premier. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
