Thank you, Mr. Chair. And, Mr. Chair, you know, it's been talked about for many years that municipalities are underfunded. Frankly, when it comes to our infrastructure, the GNWT is also underfunded. And I think that's where that big disparity is. We just don't have the funds as a government to do everything we need to do. And so at our level, at the municipal level, everyone is doing their best with the resources that we have. There are things that we can do in terms of land. I think we can make a lot of progress on land claims and settling those and freeing up land. I think that we have spent far too long in the territory talking about land because there's these ongoing processes that have been going on for generations in some cases that we can deal with; we can address those. And so by doing that, by putting our focuses there, we will get past this ongoing conversation about land. But we need to realize that, you know, this is an Indigenous territory. These are Indigenous lands. And we can't do things contrary to our treaty obligations or to the bargaining in good faith that we're doing with negotiating the agreements. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Member for the question. This is a live issue. I don't think it's a land claims issue, though. I think the question was about public land that the GNWT already has and why we're not transferring it to municipalities. This was a priority of the last government. Progress was made, but there's still sticking points around more of the technical side of things. And that's holding back the whole process, and we're at loggerheads again. This is just much like the municipal funding formula. We don't have all the money in the world, but we have a formula that says this is how much we as the GNWT give communities. And we're not meeting those commitments. So why have -- how can we do that as a government, have a formula that we're not meeting those commitments? It says because we're broke. Well, we're not broke. We have money for other priorities. We're just not prioritizing our own policies. And that's fundamentally wrong. And that's why I'm so committed to close that because this -- I mean, if the priorities of this Assembly change it, fine. But right now, the GNWT has a commitment to fulfilling its policies, all of its policies, and it's not doing the job. So I'm committed to closing that or amending the policies so we can actually meet within the fiscal framework, but I'd much rather close it and give the communities the $55 million they need.

And as for land transfer, I think we need to take the public lands we have and transfer the administration -- not just the land, because if you transfer the land, you still need to assess it, you still need to do all the zoning work and all that. If we transfer the administration down to the municipalities, then they can get started, get to work doing what they want with it right away without additional costs. And the last thing we need to do is put more cost burdens on the land to make it useable for development. Because that's our goal at the end of the day, is to spur local development and create more room for affordable housing, more room for business development, more room for growth and jobs in our community and local infrastructure. And that's, again, goes back to empower regions, empowering local communities to be successful. And I would direct the Minister not only to do that but bring this forward in an omnibus bill without delay that could get all this done at once so we're not waiting for multiple legislative reviews and multiple pieces of legislation. Action, not planning. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, just first of all, I am quite pleased to hear that this is being referenced back to our mandate letters because, really, that will be a significant role of the Premier not to necessarily go and try to do each and every one of these things but to be putting into mandate letters. And on that note, I want to say mandate letters are something that when you put something in there, it needs to be followed through on. You meet regularly with the Ministers and their deputies. You meet regularly on a timeline, and you make sure that what's in these mandate letters that's going to reflect every one of our priorities is actually getting done in a meaningful way.

With respect to this particular request for mandate letters, I know there was a review done this spring involving the NWTACR, the Association of Communities and the Municipal and Community Affairs, I'd like to see what the outcome of that review is because there's been much complaint about the funding gap and the funding formula. What was the review's outcome, what did they mutually come to agree upon?

With respect, then, to policy changes, well, again, there's been some policy changes right at the end of this Assembly or of this last Assembly. Are they going to be effective? Why were those policy changes put into place? And before we go and make yet more changes, I'd like to ensure that we are maximizing utility of what we just finished doing before the ink's even dry.

And I'm also aware that the building communities' fund -- this is formerly the gas tax -- communities across the north are advocating for an increase to what they get as northern communities. We can lend our power as the GNWT to their voices and try to increase that money that does go directly to our municipalities from the federal government.

With respect to the transfer of lands, this is an issue that I have been following really with my hat on as a Yellowknife MLA, and so I can give an example more from my experience there but knowing that this is an issue across the territory. And that is that there have been an effort to have an MOU signed between the GNWT and our municipality and for some reason still we wind up with one saying that they're waiting for some piece of paper from one, and the other saying that they're waiting for some piece of agreement from the other. I brought everyone together right near the end of the last Assembly, and I've already committed that I would to bring everybody back together, lands and city, and let's figure this one out. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Mr. Clerk, in my campaign speech for Premier, I talked about designated authorities. There are nine designated authorities in the Northwest Territories and the federal government -- are created by the federal government. We don't get a lot of funding from them. The Municipal and Community Affairs does provide funding that gives them to provide services on our behalf, but the federal government only gives them between 120 to $180,000 to run the chief and council, their administration. And in my riding, I have four designated authorities that keep on asking where are the supports going to come from? This is a responsibility of the federal government, Indigenous Service Canada. What are you going to do as the Premier and Cabinet to help address this? This is a long outstanding issue. They don't even get access to have land. And so how are you going to be able to help them? We're talking very small communities. And we need the support of this Cabinet and the Premier moving forward. So what are you going to do and how are you going to address this? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Member. Congratulations to the Speaker-elect. This is something that, again, my work experience over the last two years has shown me is a real challenge. There's this murky gray area called the designated authority that isn't really -- that's designated by policy but not designated by statute. And that creates this challenge of where -- of how to fund it and where the authority comes from. Does it fall under some things? It falls under federal legislation, like band council elections, and sometimes it's territorial legislation. So we probably -- like, there definitely needs to be a way to come forward that involves working with the community and figuring all those things out. And I think one of the first steps is really getting an inventory of authorities and responsibilities that a designated authority has that's understood by both parties. I'm sure MACA has that information, but I'm not sure if every designated authority understands that clearly as well and every employee of that designated authority does as well. And then we need to go to Ottawa and say we need to solve this problem. We have this bizarre relationship with the federal government that the territorial governments are responsible north of 60, and the funding pots that they develop for on reserve funding is only south of 60. And we have reserves up here that are underfunded that don't get access to that. We have Indigenous communities that don't get access to that. And it's this mentality that's been in place, and it's a very colonial mentality, that we already have these federal creatures up North, we don't need the federal bureaucracy. But that's changed. We've evolved. We've grown. And it's time for the relationship with Ottawa to change as well, especially around these gray areas. So I support the Member's communities. I'd like to do what we can as a government to change that. And I think we need to bring this issue to the table with the Prime Minister, bring the grand chief of the Deh Cho First Nations, the other chiefs of the Deh Cho forward, and the other designated authority chiefs, to really talk about how we can move forward on their terms to meet their needs. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this is an issue that requires some significant attention from the federal government but a better understanding from within the GNWT as well. The first step, though, just to begin, as I think we want to go forward, is to make sure that we go to meet with the communities who are impacted by this issue directly as well as with the regional governments of those communities. Certainly don't expect the GNWT should be speaking for communities without having those communities wanting us to speak for them. And perhaps what is more likely -- I hope would be more likely is that we are speaking together and that we are sharing our role as leaders with the communities and with the regional governments who are impacted by this issue.

The Northwest Territories is 50 percent Indigenous. Many of the communities outside of the regional centres are Indigenous communities and many of them are living very traditionally. But they are not treated like that by the federal government. They are treated like a rural centre anywhere else in Canada. But that is not the reality of who and what these communities are. I find it frustrating therefore that they are not recognized as that under the federal system. And it does have a direct impact on the ability for funding that they would have access to. Just an example, to give people an sense of what's at stake here, is in terms of what's available for disaster funding and disaster response funding, there's a very different situation that faces communities depending on upon the way in which the federal government is recognizing them. So it's a live issue, and it's one that's having impacts right now.

Once we are able to identify and speak with the communities themselves, going to Ottawa is the next step. But it's a matter of -- this is going to take some educating. It is not something that is I think well understood, as I said, even here within the territories or certainly within Ottawa. But this needs to be something that has serious profile being raised to it. It speaks to who the communities are, and it speaks to their ability to raise their own -- to raise themselves up and to be more effective in what they do. Thank you.

Thank you. And I think it's all been said. This is an instance where we need to work with the people on the ground, the communities, Indigenous governments, and we need to go to Ottawa. And, again, we need that infrastructure in Ottawa so that once we show up there, the people on the ground have been briefed, they know what's going on, they understand the issue. Because this is not a simple issue. I mean, I've talked to the now Speaker many times about the governance in the territory, and it is a tapestry of different systems that as Minister of MACA he was aware of. And this is also an example of how we need to work with the MLAs, because although the Speaker doesn't stand up in the House and wag his finger at the government, nonetheless he's an MLA, and he does work for his constituents, and so this is one where I would rely on his expertise in this area and work with him to make those connections in the communities. So there's lots that can be done. It's just a matter of putting our mind to it and having the infrastructure in place so that we can work with the Indigenous governments, the communities, and Ottawa. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Mr. Clerk, in NWT, we are in housing crisis. We see a lot of people on the street and in small community as well. Many of these -- some of these people in small communities are living in tent with their families. Our colleague from Nunakput have said that many times speaking about Paulatuk. So -- and many of them are living in overcrowded houses. That's -- it's all over the North. We see that. So therefore I want to ask the Minister -- the Premier candidates that what are -- I want to ask them what are their plans to work with Indigenous government to increase housing with operating and management funding? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this is coming back to a theme that I think we've spoken about many times today already, which is the relationships that we have with Indigenous governments, ensuring that we maintain those relationships and that they're meaningful going forward. There's a lot of funding that has become available directly to Indigenous governments. And as I had mentioned earlier, there's even more funding now being announced by the federal government that cannot be accessed by provincial or territorial governments and only by Indigenous and/or municipal governments.

So going firstly to Indigenous governments directly, we have the Council of Leaders. There is the housing forum that came from the Council of Leaders, which is a place where we can make sure we are making these connections between GNWT and all governments across the Northwest Territories. There, of course, are bilateral meetings that take place between GNWT and Indigenous governments, and there's the Intergovernmental Council. While there's a land and natural resources rule there, but there's the point simply that there are multiple forums where we are all interacting. So what has come out of the housing forum, what plans are in place coming out of there, if there's not yet a plan I'd like to know why and what steps need to be taken to ensure that there is. For the governments that do have money that have come in, can we work directly with them to ensure if there's anything on the GNWT side that is creating a barrier to moving forward with the funding that they have, that we are removing those barriers. And with respect, then, with the housing corporation, what else can they do, then, to fill any gaps that may remain after the projects that have been undertaken by Indigenous governments directly are completed.

And last but not least, Mr. Speaker, the housing strategy -- or the homelessness strategy that was released just towards the end of the last Assembly is something that needs to move forward. There's an opportunity. One of the first things within that is to actually create a space where groups can come together, governments can come together, non-profit sector can come together and make sure, in fact, that everyone is, indeed, working towards the goal of reducing homelessness. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And we've spoken about housing a number of times today and, again, it all comes down to partnerships. And the Member asked about working with Indigenous governments. And that's exactly what we have to do. The idea of just, you know, transferring money to an Indigenous government for O and M, that's not really in our budget. I mean, we can transfer money and responsibility but just to, you know, cut a cheque and keep it ongoing isn't really something that we have the fiscal capacity to do. What we can do, though, is work with Indigenous governments and go to Ottawa. This is an area where everyone in Canada knows there is a need for this. And so I think it's a place where we can get a lot of traction, and we can make advancements by working together. And we also have to look at different types of housing as well. Not everyone is ready for a home. Maybe people are in need of transitional housing. Maybe they're in need of, again, aftercare, we spoke about earlier. Options for facilities like that. So there's no doubt, though, that this needs to be tackled. This is an issue in the territory. If you don't -- if you have no privacy in your house, if you can't study, you know, because there's ten other people staying in one room, I mean, it impacts every single aspect of your life if you don't have adequate housing or you don't have housing. So I don't think there's any doubt that it's something we won't deal with, it's something we must do, and we must do it in partnership. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. And I thank the Member for the question. Thank you, Mr. Clerk, and thank you to the Member for the question. I think this is a sneak preview for our priorities, honestly, because the common themes here are very clear, and housing is one of them. We have spoken at length about it. I told you about my -- I told the House about my experience working with this file with the Yellowknives Dene. And, you know, that's -- again, this is a proven success model. We're seeing this take place across the Northwest Territories. And I think to the question directly about operations and maintenance funding, I think now is the time to actually look at the housing -- NWT Housing and its LHOs and whether or not we should be transferring LHOs to Indigenous governments and potentially municipalities as well. Have we outgrown the need for a centralized housing corporation, or should we be looking at a more regionalized model? I think that's what we're hearing. And I think that's something we should definitely consider. And especially where we have a treaty relationship with a self-governing nation, or nations that are soon to be self-governing, once we complete negotiations around those treaties and around land rights, so I think we should be really considering that. And if they don't have the capacity but they want the funding and they want the capacity, then let's find a pathway using the Council of Leaders, using those other intergovernmental forums. But I don't think we need to start there. We already heard that. I've heard that. We've all heard that in this House. We know what the issue is. We know what the ask is. So let's figure out how to get that money to them. Let's figure out how to get that responsibility to them, whether it's a bilateral deal, whether it's a wholesale change of policy. So I'll say this to the House, let's put that in the mandate letter for the housing Minister to actually explore and look at how we can move more money out of the GNWT and into the hands of First Nations and self-governing sovereign territories. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Clerk. Mr. Clerk, I have one last question for each Premier candidate. And it's a quick question, I promise, because I'm guessing some people want to go for lunch up there. So I'm looking for a yes or no. If a candidate is not successful today in their bid for Premier, will they still put their name forward for Cabinet? Thank you.