I'm going to try and speak slower. I'm the youngest of four children, so I learned very early on that I needed to speak quickly if I wanted to get what I had to say out there so everyone could hear me.
A lot of times we are asked, as people sitting in this House, why we wanted to be politicians. I can honestly say to you that I never wanted to be a politician. My reason for running solely has been because what I have seen in my experiences in living in the North. I realize that our government often doesn't have a voice that represents science-based decision making in the House or brings the skill set that I can bring to the table. While I'm not experienced within the Government of the Northwest Territories, I am far from inexperienced. What I bring to the table is 13 years of northern engineering experience, working on the ground with Indigenous workers, Indigenous groups, as well as other project managers, engineers, scientists, community members, Indigenous organizations, development corporations, as well as other consultants. I have worked all over the North. That includes Nunavut and the Yukon. I have spent time in your communities. I've drilled holes to investigate what your foundations need to be for your buildings, and I've watched everything change.
The climate is changing. There are impacts happening, and, while those are affecting your communities, they are also affecting my projects. I too was dealing with the ice roads melting. I too am dealing with low water levels so that we can't get the barged equipment in to do your work. All of these things I have seen as I have travelled around in the North including to mine sites, as well. I wanted to bring that experience to the table and bring a different lens to show that we can be doing things differently in the North, that we can be a leader in climate change adaptation and research.
While I may have a very science-based background and I found that, as we've been moving through our priority setting session, there's been a lot of discussion about social issues versus economic issues. It's very easy to try to pigeonhole things or to put them into silos. One of the things that I am really noticing as we go through this is how intertwined everything in the North is. The things that I may consider to be an economic driver, others can see the social ramifications of that. A huge issue, I believe, is our economy, where I note during the campaigning process and period, I was very much labelled an economy and infrastructure type person. However, I would argue that, if we don't have our economy going, we are going to have a huge increase in social issues going forward, so that's an area where I think that we need to stop looking at things as being economic or social and recognize that they're all integrated. That goes for all of us, as well.
While I may be sort of labelled as the economic candidate or the economic person or the infrastructure person, I bring a real balance to the Assembly. I have been very active in social issues or social groups within Yellowknife since I arrived here 13 years ago. I've been a director with the YWCA. I've been a Girl Guide leader for 12 years. I've been working with our youth, and I've been advocating strongly for women in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, and I believe that all of that work and that volunteer experience will bring to me a skillset and a balance that I can use to tackle all of the issues and problems that we may be facing as we move forward.
In my work as a professional engineer, I've worked at the Giant Mine. I've been there for three years, solely on site, and I've worked on that project as a consultant. I believe I'm one of the few people in this room who can bring that knowledge to the table. As well, in the rest of my work, I've done a lot of remediation and environmental assessment work. I go out to these sites. I see what is happening when things are not done right, and I see the impacts that that has on the communities, on the people, and on our budgets. If we could only do things right and we took a proactive approach to things, we would be able to prevent a lot of the issues that happen. We won't be having another Giant Mine. We do have a regulatory system that will prevent that. Now, however, we need to make sure we have people in Cabinet who can understand the implications of certain projects and be able to balance the economic benefits with the social benefits.
I know, in my work with the Indigenous development corporations, that there is a real appetite for mining and resource extraction in the territory. I feel that I bring a really unique skill set and experience in that area that would be very beneficial to all of us trying to move this territory forward and out of this economic slump that we find ourselves in.
Throughout our conversations in the priority-setting, I have been a firm advocate for northern retention and northern businesses, contracts staying in the North and work being done by northern workers. That is something that I promise you, right now, no matter what side of the table I end up sitting on, that that is the lens and that is something that I will continue to push for and advocate for always.
When it comes to the climate change issue that I brought up earlier, I have been trained in the PIEVC protocol, which is an Engineers Canada protocol that is used to assess climate changes on infrastructure. I believe that I can bring that lens to the table and help us all to see things from the bigger picture when it comes to the impacts on our infrastructure.
Another area in which I am quite proud of has been my activity and my involvement in my professional associations, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Associations of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists. There, I have been a two-term councillor, and I have had a lot of involvement with the committee work there. I have been active in planning and presenting at our Professional Development Conference every year, and I also act as a mentor to young women who are entering the engineering and geoscience fields.
The other association that I was speaking to is the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies of the Northwest Territories. I am proud to say that I was the first female president of that association, and I represented the Northwest Territories on the national and international stage in Ottawa, spending time on Parliament Hill and meeting Justin Trudeau. I won't show you the really embarrassing photo of me kind of fangirling over him. Maybe that shyness kind of dimmed a bit. I shouldn't say that, I guess.
I think that what I am trying to get at here is that I have a broad range of experience, and I am comfortable either being at a work site, on the ground with workers, all the way up to the leaders of our country and beyond. I feel like that is another asset that would be really important in working in the North.
In politics in the South, it's a very civilized, very set-out protocol, and I am not sure how much filters from the people on the ground all the way up to the top, but in the North, that is completely different. We are going to be going into places where we are going to have to get along and be able to work with, talk to, learn from, and listen to people who maybe aren't in the same field or in the same career area that we are in. I feel that I can do that quite easily, and I am able to move between the different communities.
When it came time to decide about whether or not I was going to put my name forward for Cabinet, I had always been given the advice that it was better to sit and wait, take one term, learn how to be a Regular Member, and that way I would be more effective. I know that I would be effective as a Regular Member. However, my answer to the media when they asked that was that I was going to wait and see, and I was going to look at the skill sets of the rest of you who have been elected and make my decision at that time.
When I look around the room, I see an amazing set of skill sets here. I am actually really, really encouraged. From day one, we have lawyers and nurses. We have people involved with other parts of the health community. We have social advocacy people. We have environmental people. We have infrastructure people. I know that, no matter who does end up in our Cabinet, we are going to be well-served by those people, and I have every intent to work collaboratively, no matter what side I end up on, whether it be in Cabinet, working in one of the portfolios that I think I am actually quite suited towards or on one of the portfolios that maybe doesn't seem to be my natural fit. However, there is nothing out there that does intimidate me, and I think that I could take on any one of those portfolios.
When I look around here, I see that we need to have this balance. We need have to people who can look at all sides of the issue. I will be listening to all of you. My door will always be open. I will always come forward with good ideas, and I can tell you right now that my intent for the territory is to do good. I am not in this for my ego. If I was, I don't think I would have made it through the campaigning period; I would already have been long gone. I want to say that I just want to bring the skill sets that I have, I want to use the knowledge that I have gained, and the uniqueness of that skill set and that voice that I have, to do good things for this territory, and I know that I can be very, very effective as a Cabinet Minister. Thank you very much.
---Applause