Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Thank you, again, candidates. My second question is how do you propose to be cost effective with the resources available to us while pursuing the priorities we set as an Assembly?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And that is the $2 billion question. We don't necessarily in the Northwest Territories have -- or the GNWT have a revenue problem. We have an expenditure problem. We do have a pretty healthy revenue. More money would always be better. But I think that if we focus our efforts on the areas where we want to see impacts, then we can make impacts in those areas. As I've said before, we're stretched too thin in certain areas. And I've seen it as a Minister, where you want to accomplish something, but you have positions that aren't filled, things take a long time, and we don't quite get where we want to go. If we had more resources on those specific areas, and those are going to be the priorities that this Assembly sets, then we can do more with what we have. We also need to look at when we develop legislation and policies at how we can provide more services within our current resources and whether it is giving certain professions or occupations the ability to provide more services. You know, a common one that you hear about is pharmacists giving flu shots. We need to look at all of those types of things so that we are making sure we are leaving no stone unturned when it comes to cost savings and effective deliverance of services. We also need to get our infrastructure costs under control. There's no need -- there's no reason for architectural drawings for every new outhouse we build. We can have one set of drawings, and we can build that outhouse all across the territory. The same goes for things like housing. All types of infrastructure. We can look at standardization. And that's been done in other places, and it's proven effective. We need to look at the number of positions we have on the books in the GNWT. A lot of those positions are vacant. What is that money being used for. So there's a number of housekeeping things that we can do as a government to ensure that we are getting more bang for our buck. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Thank you for the question. And I think this is a fundamental part of how we need to govern in the Northwest Territories. And the last speaker was absolutely right. I think we have a healthy revenue inflow, but we have a lot of priorities and needs. And we've always been a government that's been catching up with our deficits. And that's why we need to take a full review of existing capital projects and make sure they're still meeting the needs that they're originally set out to do. This includes the large mega projects, like Taltson, the Slave Geological Province that have millions of dollars invested into them, and we need to look at if that investment is something we want to continue or if we need to prioritize something more urgent like Mackenzie Valley Highway. We need to review unfilled vacancy -- vacant positions as well and see what the barriers are and if we still need those on the books or if we need to defer those resources elsewhere. Because right now, I think, again, the priority needs to be on wages and on retaining our skilled workforce in the public service so we can get moving on our other priorities.

I would like to see more centralization within the public service as well. I've talked about an executive council office that would bring in the financial management board and strengthen its treasury functions so it will allow it to properly -- to analyze proposals that are brought forward to Cabinet to make sure that they're -- there's a double check. A policy check that makes sure that they're meeting our policies and there's a financial check that makes sure they're spending our resources wisely, and they're not setting us up for a ticking time bomb later on. And if we standardize that approach and streamline how decisions are getting to Cabinet and make sure there's that double check, I think we'll have better results internally. And I also think we need to do more on cutting the red tape. Standardization is a really important way to cut costs, and if we have a Minister who's charged with that portfolio and is looking not just at cutting the red tape for businesses but cutting the red tape for the bureaucracy as well, I think we'll find savings there. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I do agree we have an expenditure problem. It is not new. It is many years now that there is a gap that continues to increase between revenues and expenditures. There's three things I'd like to put forward to try build on what's already been said, and one of them is our procurement efficiency. We've had procurement review take place, and it's been overall, in my view, very successful. There are still internal processes to look at in terms of the actual doing of procurement and how we're going forward. We're creating red tape within our own processes and within our own departments. And I've had colleagues here provide at least a couple of examples to me over the last few days about ways in which we are creating unnecessarily extra steps, and with every extra step comes extra costs for the proponent but also to the government. For the proponent, it's increasing the cost of our ultimate project and obviously internally is increasing operational costs generally.

But number 2, Mr. Speaker -- or Mr. Chair, would be government renewal. This really is the vision of government renewal. It started from saying why is it that we can't get our expenditures under control? Why is it that we continue to spend on programs without necessarily knowing if they're effective? And so we now, four years ago, did not even know all of the problems and services administered by the GNWT. We have that inventory now. And this is what we need to take the next step that is critical is to determine what is working well, put money into what is working well, and stop doing what's not working. But then we can take the resources that are in those other programs and put them into the ones that are, in fact, working well.

And aligned with that third point, we are often chasing federal dollars where everyone's always happy to get the federal dollars but that doesn't mean they come without our own ties. So if we're going to have a new program or service being proposed, ask ourselves what existing program or service is being replaced, is being improved upon, so that we're not just adding new positions; we're actually taking what we have and doing better with it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We're all aware of how important childcare is for every community in the Northwest Territories. I've heard from several daycare organizations that are concerned with the impacts of the bilateral agreement signed by our government and the Government of Canada and how it can potentially affect their funding. My question is would the Premier-elect agree to have a review of that agreement, and how would they look at ensuring that we have sustainable daycare in our territory? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Member for the question. I have two small children, a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, so daycare is very much a part of my life. And I understand the challenges that a lot of families are going through. I had -- our day home closed last year unexpectedly, and we nearly had to take my wife or I out of the workforce to care for children. Luckily it worked out. But that's something that affects far too many parents. And I understand that struggle. But I also understand how important $10-a-day daycare is. That was a life -- a game changer for our family and for many families in the Northwest Territories. But what we've set up is not sustainable and we know that because daycare, the daycare associations, the daycare providers, are telling us that. So we need to do -- we need to renegotiate that bilateral. It's not a -- that's not a nice to have or it would be great to do this. It's something that has to happen if we're going to maintain the spaces that parents depend on and so we can keep them in the workforce and keep their cost of living low. That means going to Ottawa and having that discussion and finding -- and looking internally to see why didn't we make that ask in the first place, because I'm sure they're going to say well, you signed it, what's going on here. And that's going to take a bit of time, but I think that should be part of the first discussions we have with the Prime Minister when we take the Indigenous leaders to Ottawa as well. And I think when it comes to this, though, it's so important we can't just afford to wait for Ottawa to open the cheque book. We need to make these resources available as well. And we need to do it quickly, so we don't hit this crunch that we're being told about. I think we've all gotten correspondence that on April 1st we might see a complete collapse of our daycare industry. So this cannot happen. We need to provide the funding until we can fix the bilateral agreement. But that is a priority for me, and it's a priority for parents across the Northwest Territories. And I understand your struggle, and I'm going to do my part regardless of what role I play in the House to make sure we have sustainable, affordable daycare for generations to come. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This challenge of childcare is one that impacts our labour market here in the Northwest Territories and obviously the quality of life for residents in the Northwest Territories. It's a question not only of the costs of childcare which are high but also the availability of the spaces. So there really are -- in my view, there are two parts to what's at issue. The agreement, as far as committing to review, it seems clear that the agreement doesn't seem to be sufficient given the concerns that are being raised. So certainly a review can be done but there are immediate concerns rising before we hit April 1st, which is coming fairly quickly. There has been a review done, I understand, of the salary grids of what it is that people are being paid for childcare. I think we need to understand what that review is at, what are those costs, what are those salary grids so that we are bringing in properly trained and qualified individuals to be caring for the youngest Members of society. With that information, then we can look at what the actual operating costs are of daycare associations and day homes and determine what the gap is. If the gap is of a nature that can be indeed funded by the GNWT, that may be a choice that this Assembly and the next Cabinet may want to make. If the gap is too significant and too great, then certainly there may be short-term funding that can help bridge that gap so that facilities do stay open but then the long term is responsibility on Ministers to be going to Ottawa to say that what is not working with the agreement that we have, but let's begin by understanding what that gap is, do that quickly to make sure, again, that residents know what their options are going to be in the immediate and the short-term future and make sure that that issue is resolved. Thank you.

Thank you. I can assure the House that the idea of asking for more money was our first idea. The way the deal was structured, the money is the money. It's the same formula used across Canada and so the federal government is not willing to have a one-off deal with one jurisdiction in Canada and leave all of the other jurisdictions on the same formula. So what needs to happen is this government needs to put more money into early learning and childcare if we want to see more spaces, if we want more professionals recruited and retained in childcare centres. That's the bottom line. I don't think there's any better investment than in early learning and childcare. And I think that it's -- you know, we talk about where we are going to find the money to implement our priorities. Well, I think this should be one of the priorities. I wish I could have gotten the money in the last government as the Minister of ECE. Unfortunately, I took all the money for new initiatives for SFA and income assistance enhancements and there was none left over. So that has been, you know -- this has always been my priority, to get this money in the life -- early in in the life of this Assembly because we need to expand the spaces that we have -- or create more spaces. We have been working with -- we created an infrastructure fund, because in many communities there is no space for a childcare centre. We worked with a number of organizations who have actually built more spaces; however, the number of organizations now who have that capacity has diminished. They've all built their spaces. So we're taking -- the government is now taking a different approach and trying to be more proactive in terms of developing spaces. The federal government has committed more money for infrastructure and so hopefully we're going to be receiving that soon as well. So there are things that we can do, but I think that this is one area where we actually need to step up and do what other jurisdictions are doing, like the Yukon who spends an extra $10 million relative to us. So that's what we need to do. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Mr. Clerk, in the Northwest Territories in the small communities, we have 65 percent of 25 and under in our small communities. We have a population of 43,000 people. My experience over the years shows that we have about 10,000 homes short, and also about 12,000 homeownership repairs we urgently really need and in between about $11 billion to fix up these two urgent issues. The current housing budget right now we have $200 million, and the problem with that is that our policies doesn't work in our small communities. And right now we also have housing corporation in April of last year made application for $60 million to address the housing crisis but they end up fixing up their own housing assets. Housing corporation has been created in 1972, 52 years ago now, and yet we still having housing crisis as we know today. I have a client in Lutselk'e who is going on seven years has taken out 16 buckets of raw sewage out of her bathtub. And we can't get that fixed because of the policies. So my question is to the Premier -- potential Premiers here, my question going forward, what are your plans as Premiers to address the current housing crisis to address new homeownership and homeownership repairs that's much needed to keep up with growing young population and urgent housing crisis we're in? Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, there is a housing crisis happening across this country and across the territory. That has been raised across I think every one of our constituencies we have heard it, meetings with Indigenous leaders we have heard it. We need housing across the spectrum. It is impacting -- we can't even build new houses. We can't, because there's nowhere for people to live to build the houses while they're building them. There's nowhere for teachers to live. There's nowhere for nurses to live. It's impacting aftercare. Housing is something that in my view is going to be impacting every single priority that comes out of this Assembly and is going to have an impact on those priorities because we can't deliver them if we can't house the people to do the things we need them to do.

So number one thing we've heard it from Indigenous governments, Mr. Chair, is to better involve them in what money is available to us. There are significant funds available to Indigenous governments and to municipalities. The Housing Accelerator Fund from the federal government is not available to provinces or territories. Why is that money not flowing to the Northwest Territories municipalities and to Indigenous governments? Are there things that the GNWT can pay for that will allow them to access those funds. There -- again, that money, they want that money to flow so let's make sure it's flowing to the Northwest Territories, and we have a responsibility to remove any barriers that may be here.

Let's make sure that the land is available, whether it's to Indigenous governments or to municipalities so that they can access it quickly and efficiently and make it available for development so that housing can be built to it. If we can look to having our Indigenous -- having Indigenous governments take responsibility, which they want to take to build their housing for their communities, then it's not going to be counting towards the housing numbers that are -- or the housing allotment that seems to be constraining the GNWT's housing corporation. So, again, empowering Indigenous governments with the ability to spend the money in their own communities and in a way that is respectful of the housing that they want will not only get the housing faster but it won't take away from the housing stock numbers that we have. Thank you.

Thank you. Territory wide, this is the issue that we hear about the most. I would be surprised if this Assembly doesn't determine this is our biggest issue in the territory. And so it is one that we need to address. We need to focus our efforts on it. And, you know, we've heard a number of ways that it can be addressed. Again, partnerships is the biggest way forward, I believe. Partnerships with the Indigenous governments who have seen lots of money flow into the territory to assist them with helping their Members. We need to work closely -- and this has been expressed by the Indigenous governments, they're open to working more closely with us so that we can coordinate our efforts, so that, you know, if they are focusing on repairs, we can focus on new builds. So that is something that needs to happen. And some of that work has already begun through the Council of Leaders. There was a housing working group that reviewed policies. And so we need to continue those efforts. As well, we need to work with the municipalities to help them develop land. Sometimes it is a financing thing. They might need some assistance to build their roads, put in the sewer infrastructure. So how do we make that happen? And we also need to work with private industry because we can't just build social housing. We also need market housing. We need it across the territory. I know in my community it's -- we have an older population. We have many seniors living in three-bedroom homes that they raised their families in. They don't need those three-bedroom homes. They want seniors housing. And so by focusing our efforts on developing housing in communities in participation with municipalities, we open up additional housing. So by building one house, we're really getting two houses. So there's lots that can be done, and it's just going to take a concerted effort by this government in partnership with Indigenous governments and municipalities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Member for the question. This is a great example of the GNWT needs to get out of the way and to empower small communities for success. And when their designated authorities, or First Nations, and they can have access to different funding streams, there's already a built in pathway to bring more resources into the community for that. Where I worked, YKDFN, they're building -- they have an ambitious housing project as well. It's taken a while to get off the ground but the funding is their own funding. The project is their own project. And how they've established it, how they're going to run it is really innovative, unique, and it's going to I think replace their social housing in Dettah and N'dilo. So that's one example I'm very familiar with. I'm sure -- and I know there's other examples across the territories where that's a proven model of success. So we need to support that as a government, and that's part of that relationship building that's so important. And, you know, the Member was talking about policies that aren't working in small communities. Well, that's why we need to regionalize our policies. And when I say regionalize, I also mean Indigenize because when it's a small community in the Northwest Territories it's an Indigenous community as well. And that's what we need to ask ourselves, does this policy work and if there isn't -- and if we're hearing all these complaints, why are we maintaining it? And we need that chain -- that kind of food chain where we ask ourselves that question. Like, is there any point in maintaining it if it's not serving the people -- if it's not serving the people of the Northwest Territories. So we can continue those partnerships that have been so fruitful. We can continue to support bilateral funding agreements. And I think we -- again, we just need to get out of the way. I think we even need to look at the housing -- the NWT housing, former housing corporation, and see if that's the structure we really need to deliver housing in the Northwest Territories. If there's a better way to flow that funding directly to municipalities and First Nations and make sure we can get housing built quickly, effectively, and locally. Thank you.