Communication is one of the areas that, again, is often undervalued within a government and yet is so critical. It really came to the forefront when COVID-19 hit how much we relied on our communications in the GNWT. I have to be honest, Mr. Speaker. In previous years, when we have had so many priorities and so many mandates, government had to make tough choices, and often it was the decision: do we increase our communications, which we need desperately, or do we provide the program that is in our priorities and mandate? I hate to say it, but oftentimes communications took the hit.

I understand that, but our communications team is trying to do their best and is stretched thin, as I had stated earlier. However, we owe it to the public. The secretariat was a great example and a great example of how the first question: how we are going to relate with Members better? Usually in previous governments, what happened was that we would present an initial brief to the Members; we would take their feedback; we would work on it, give and take; we would go back, present it; and then we would go public. The secretariat, all in all, all of us recognize that that process was not followed properly, and we did not do a good job of communicating, myself communicating, to the public. However, I don't want to lose sight. The secretariat, we should not be focusing so much on the lack of communication.

We need to focus, on the secretariat, about what it is. It's bringing our isolation units, our border controls, our PPE, our 811, and our Protect NWT together so it's cohesive, in one department, and people can get back to work. We are working on our communications. We recognized it was a huge issue. We have spent a lot of time with our communications team to try to get better on that, and we will be coming out in the future with more communications. However, Mr. Speaker, I do want to give credit. The communications team has taken a beating over the while, and they are doing the best they can with the resources they have, as well, and I do want to say that I am proud of all of our communications people.