Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, before I answer that question, I want to take an opportunity to thank our previous public administrator for all of his years of service. He certainly helped carry us to a number of milestones in Hay River, including the amazing new facility, the work towards a single-authority approach, a single-system approach here in the Northwest Territories, as well as things like Woodland Manor. I think he was a valuable contributor to making those things happen.

However, having said that, a new set of eyes is always a good thing. I have had an opportunity to meet with the new public administrator to talk about Hay River, talk about the services being provided there. I have asked him to get oriented as quickly as possible, get an understanding of the lay of the land. He is also, you know, a city councillor, so he has a pretty good perspective of what's going on in the community. I have asked him to get oriented, and then we would have some further conversations about what he is seeing, what he thinks we need to be focusing on. Basically, we all want the same thing, Mr. Speaker. We want quality services for the residents of Hay River and the North.

Like Mr. McNeely, the Minister has answered a few of my questions already. So it's become clear that, during the life of this Assembly, the Hay River authority will not be brought into the territorial health authority. I mean, there just is not the political will to get it done from Cabinet, and so the Minister must work with the public administrator to address these recurring issues that I keep hearing about. Since the Minister said that the public administrator still needs to orient himself to this, I guess they have not made a plan. What I would like to see is the Minister and the new administrator, Mr. Willows, sit down and create a plan with clear goals and deliverables so that people can see whether or not progress is being made, because right now people are frustrated and they are giving up hope about the service of healthcare in Hay River. So will the Minister sit down with Mr. Willows and create a plan as I described?

I just want to correct one of the Member's statements. This Cabinet is committed to bringing Hay River into the public service. It is one of our mandate items, and we are doing a significant amount of work to make that happen. It is a big task. It may not happen in the life of this government, but that does not mean that we are not doing important work today that is going to help make that happen in the future.

I did have an opportunity to meet with Mr. Willows. We did talk about the authority, and I have provided Mr. Willows with a mandate letter outlining his role, responsibilities, and expectations as the public administrator in Hay River. The letter explained his scope of work as a public administrator and sort of articulates that, in the absence of the board of management, the public administrator is not involved in the day-to-day activities of the operation but provides guidance and oversight to ensure the compliance and objectives of legislation and policies and regulations are actually being met. He does also have the opportunity to provide advice to me as the Minister on things that we need to do or things that are not happening in the authority so we can make sure that they happen.

I understand that the public administrator isn't running the day-to-day operations. Like the Minister said, he can provide advice to the Minister about what needs to happen. So will the Minister commit to sit down with Mr. Willows and produce a document that identifies the problems in Hay River and ways to address them with clear goals and deliverables so that people can see progress is being made?

The public administrator will be required to do public meetings similar to board meetings. At which point, he will have an opportunity to explain and identify some of the things that he's seeing and witnessing in the community and hear from community residents on where their concerns are. I know the Member has been very good at helping articulate some of the challenges that people are seeing in Hay River, and he has shared those with me. We are certainly attempting to address some of those.

One of the things I think we can be happy about is there have been an awful lot of concerns about wait times and same-day appointments in Hay River. We have tasked the CEO, and the previous public administrator tasked the CEO with finding some solutions on that with some support from people throughout the community. As of September 1^st, by way of example, clinics began providing some same-day appointments, and patients can call in or walk in in the mornings for appointments that day. So we are listening. We are making improvements. There are changes that are happening. I believe that the public administrator, with some fresh eyes, is going to be able to look at some of the challenges and offer some new and unique solutions.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The reason I asked about getting together and creating a plan is because the public administrator isn't responsible to this House, whereas the Minister is. In the absence of Hay River being part of the territorial authority, I need some sort of way to convince my constituents that we are making progress. So further to the Minister's previous point, what progress is being made to bring Hay River into the territorial authority? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There are a couple of things that need to happen. Obviously, we need to determine and quantify the cost of bringing the individuals into the public service. Specifically, what I mean by that is the cost of the pensions and the cost of ensuring those who are already receiving pensions through Hay River who have worked there over the many years are not adversely affected, but that the individuals coming into the new system, our system, with superannuation are not adversely affected or penalized as a result of the pension that they provided in the past. We've had discussions in here about the pension in Hay River and how it's more of a Volkswagen than a GNWT Cadillac, and we have to figure how to roll those wins.

We're doing that work now. We're trying to quantify what that means. That is taking a partnership between Health and Social Services and Finance. We're getting closer to having some better numbers there, but some of it still depends on our negotiations with the UNW. We do need to have a long conversation with the UNW, because they are the bargaining unit for both the GNWT, but also Hay River and its two separate collective agreements. So once we have some of our financial certainty, we'll be able to have more informed conversations with the union, which will help us figure out what the ultimate costs of this transfer will be.

It's a lot of work. There are a lot of moving pieces. Sometimes they move faster and then slow down and then speed up, slow down. We are working on it. It is important. I take the Member's point. We'll certainly keep the Member and committee informed as we continue to move forward. Thank you.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as other Members of the House have mentioned, many of my constituents have concerns with the government's carbon pricing plan. I've taken a look at some of the statistics on emissions. If you look at the overall emissions for commercial and residential combined, it only makes up 10 per cent of total carbon emissions, so it doesn't seem like everyday Northern families are really the ones who are creating the highest level of emissions. I'm wondering if there's a way we can better craft a system to shield them from potential economic hardship that comes along with new pricing systems.

When you look at industry, mining, upstream oil and gas production accounts for 25 per cent of emissions, whereas transportation accounts for 49 per cent. This seems like industry is really where we need to target. So has the Minister explored a cap-and-trade system or the potential inclusion of the NWT into a carbon market where we could put the onus squarely on industry who are causing most of the emissions? Thank you. Sorry, Mr. Speaker. Minister of Finance.

Masi. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, during our review of carbon pricing, we did look at whether cap-and-trade was feasible. The analysis at the time was the NWT economy was too small to participate in any cap-and-trade program in any meaningful manner. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Did the Minister look into partnering with larger jurisdictions to be part of a carbon market? The province of Ontario was a part of California's carbon market. They joined with Quebec. So was that proposed, or was it just looking at the NWT as a carbon market?

As the Government of the Northwest Territories, our priority is looking after the people of the Northwest Territories. That's why we informed Ottawa that we're going to come up with a made-in-the-NWT approach that would help minimize the impact that carbon pricing was going to have on residents of the Northwest Territories.

I agree with the Minister. We need a made-in-the-North system, so I'm trying to explore other options that may have not been considered. I commend the government for actually bringing forward a plan. It's just late in the game, and people are concerned about how it's going to affect families, so can the Minister share the cap-and-trade analysis they've done with this House or release it publicly so we can see the analysis and see exactly what was considered?

The federal government came up with carbon pricing. Our job was to adjust. I think the Government of the Northwest Territories and the folks have done a great job at mitigating some of the impact it's going to have on residents of the Northwest Territories. As far as the cap-and-trade analysis, I'll have a look and see if that document exists. If it does, I'd be more than happy to share it with Members. Again, I go back to the fact that we are finding a made-in-the-NWT approach.

We recognize there was going to be hardship in families. We had a "what we heard" document. We had a number of comments from across the Northwest Territories. A lot of folks across the Northwest Territories are wondering what's going to be on their table tomorrow morning for breakfast. I think we've taken steps to help address the impact that it's going to have on families in the Northwest Territories.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that there are offsets and rebates in the carbon pricing proposal. However, industry, who are our largest emitters, seems to have many very high rebates built into it. So I'd like to ask the Minister what the priority was in the carbon pricing plan. Was it on the everyday family, the people who are producing only 10 per cent of emissions, or was the focus really to work with industry to lower those emissions and to bring us to the standard that we need to be at to reduce temperatures moving into the future? Thank you.

We are trying to find a balanced approach. Of course, industry in the Northwest Territories, which is very important to the Northwest Territories and our economy, are some of the biggest emitters in the Northwest Territories, so we wanted to work out a program that would benefit them. It goes without saying in this Chamber that people in the Northwest Territories are our priority.

Mitigating the impact on the people in the Northwest Territories, I think, is something that the government has done a fairly good job at. We rolled out our approach to carbon pricing. So there's a lot of information out there for those that are curious as to what the impact might be on them. Again, we need to find a balanced approach that works for industry and, more importantly, works for people in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a few questions for the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation. Mr. Speaker, in the past, we have had some successful projects in the Mackenzie Delta, mainly Tsiigehtchic and Fort McPherson, with the building of three log homes, two of which went to private homeowners and one is now an RCMP residence. I would like to ask the Minister: is the Housing Corporation open to pilot projects in the Mackenzie Delta to build log homes? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First and foremost, I do know that building log homes has been done in the past up in the region, and that there were some successful projects with that. If we were going to look at such a pilot or project moving forward, they would have to meet national building codes, first and foremost. Also, as you know, we have had some debate in this House in the last government and this government about even just modular and stick homes, and that is another concern for residents up in our region. If we were going to look at log homes, it would be having to meet the national building codes. Also, the costs, it could be very expensive getting logs and getting that kind of work put together when you compare to modular or stick-built.

As you know, and as I have said in this House since we started session, all communities are going to do some community housing plans to look at priorities, where they want to go. As Members also know, we do have a community housing support initiative that we are working with community governments, Indigenous governments, to look at unique and innovative ways to address housing needs in our communities. If we were going to look at that, I would say that program, the community housing initiative, might be the one to look at. I will have more discussions with the Member and hope that he brings that back to his leaders to discuss.