Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department has had the legislation for about a week, and we have been going through and trying to determine how it will impact here in the Northwest Territories. I think there is still more work that needs to be done on that analysis. However, through our early analysis, it is not expected that the proposed legislation will significantly impact how CFS is currently delivered here in the Northwest Territories. It is important to note that the key principles in their legislation remain generally consistent with the principles set out in our NWT Child and Family Services Act, as well as Building Stronger Families.

As the Member said, the purpose of the proposed legislation is to affirm the rights and jurisdictions of Indigenous peoples in relation to child and family services and sets out some principles applicable at a national level to the provision of child and family services to Indigenous children. I would like to note that the Government of the Northwest Territories, both before this legislation and after this legislation passes in Ottawa, has been and will continue to be in support of Indigenous governments exercising jurisdiction in the area of child and family services when they choose. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It seems that the reserves in the Northwest Territories and the Tlicho Community Services Agency may be the most likely entities to want to implement this bill. Does the government plan to provide any particular help to these organizations or Indigenous governments in order to put themselves into a position to implement this act if passed?

Currently, there are two different Indigenous governments that actually have the power and the authority to draw down child and family services today. We are working with all of our Indigenous partners. If these Indigenous governments choose to draw down those authorities now, we will certainly work with them in cooperation with Canada to ensure that those services are drawn down and devolved in a way that gives them the ability to provide high-quality services for all their residents.

I wonder what this legislation might do to federal transfers for health to the NWT. Would transfers to specific Indigenous governments go via the GNWT, or would they go directly to the Indigenous governments?

Honestly, we can't answer that question yet. One of the issues that has been raised at the national level about this legislation is that there are no dollars tied to it. If dollars come in phase 2, and I believe that is where the federal government said money might come, we would be happy to work with them, with our Indigenous partners. The bottom line is we all want the same thing, which is fewer Indigenous children in care. We want to build and support stronger families. I think we are all trying to do the same thing. We are prepared to work together.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the responses from the Minister. It is my understanding that the bill allows Indigenous governments to negotiate coordination agreements with provincial and territorial governments as well as Ottawa. Is this an approach GNWT will work with if the bill becomes law? Mahsi.

Our current legislation requires us to work with the Indigenous governments and Indigenous communities here in the Northwest Territories if a child from their community were facing apprehension. We are committed to continuing to do that. If the Indigenous governments choose to draw down these responsibilities, of course, we want to work with them and with Ottawa to make sure that those responsibilities are transferred effectively.

At the end of the day, we want the same thing. We want a system that supports families to stay together where it is appropriate. Where children have to be apprehended, we want to make sure that it is done in such a way as to maintain connections with culture, community, and residents. We all want the same thing. We are prepared to work together with all of our partners to make it a reality. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.

Masi. Minister of Infrastructure, Tourism and Investment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. ITI supports the economy in a bunch of different ways. The grants and contributions document is a testament to that. It is a roll-up of various ways that we invest in industry, businesses, and entrepreneurs across the Northwest Territories. That said, we also have appropriate but different ways of reporting out of each of these funding areas. We presently have various accounting spending in this House. I have tabled the BDIC report in this House, community futures, investments in the Northwest Territories Tourism Marketing Plan. Staff and myself regularly get out and talk to the chambers across the territory to be able to talk about some of these documents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Can the Minister verify if these individuals, entrepreneurs, businesses, and groups need to apply yearly, or can they get multi-year funding through this program?

For the most part, applicants to the ITI programming, like the Support to Entrepreneurs and Economic Development Policy, do have to generally apply each year.

I noticed that, on page 4, table 2, "Contributions by clients exceeding $100,000," the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines received $190,600, and on page 8, the table "Contribution funding by major program activities for 2018," there is $100,000 for Aboriginal Development Support Program and $90,600 for the NWT Chamber of Mines. Can the Minister advise if these funds are the same funding?

That is a fairly detailed question. I don't have the document in front of me. If I remember right, we list by client, by region, by sector, by program area, and so on in the document, but I think that I can confirm that there are two different accountings of the same funding.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister giving the answers here today. My final question is: from what I understand, the NWT Chamber of Commerce is responsible for providing funding for the Aboriginal Development Support Program. Can the Minister explain why the department uses a third party, the NWT Chamber of Mines, to allocate these funds? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This is something that I can talk about for hours, how we are trying to build capacity and participation of Indigenous governments in the mineral resources sector in the Northwest Territories. One of the ways that we are doing that to help grow our economy is through their participation in a number of these industry events. I particularly participate in Geoscience AME Roundup and PDAC. In fact, at PDAC just last week, the chamber hosted an investment event at PDAC. That included presentations and different discussions with Indigenous business leaders and representatives in the mining project sectors across the Northwest Territories by the Chamber of Mines. This is one of the reasons that we have done this through the chamber. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a few questions for the Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources. I would like to ask the Minister: what is the department doing to make sure that communities can implement and fund their Wildland Fire Protection Plans? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we know, we have issues with fire around some of our communities, and ENR tries to work with the communities to deal with it. Through, I think, the community access program through MACA, there is some funding there that the communities can use if they want to fire smart their communities.

During this past fire season, it was a fairly quiet fire season for us, so we actually had some members of our fire crews, just to keep working, do some fire smarting around the communities, cut some brush. As we are able to do, we will assist them, but there are some monies out there, I think, through the small community fund that comes through the rural and remote committee. There is funding available there, too, so if a community wants to do some more fire smarting, they have access to some funds. I think we greatly enhanced those funds during this session. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I mentioned earlier today that ENR used to fund fire smarting in the NWT communities, but has since offloaded the burden onto the communities themselves. Why was this decision made?