Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I understand that I am the last one to speak and that people are eager to get going, so I'm going to try to be brief. I want to start off by thanking the public service and just saying that I agree that people were asked to work different straight across the Northwest Territories, across Canada, and across the world. People had a lot of responsibility on their backs and really did perform during, as you say, unprecedented times. I just wanted to start off by thanking them for that. I do agree with the MLA Lafferty from Monfwi, my colleague from Monfwi, that I do have concerns around the COVID secretariat in the sense that no one has died from COVID luckily, in the Northwest Territories, and that we are seeing people die in the Northwest Territories from addictions, from illness, from homicide, and from suicide, and $8 million could go a long way to support addictions in the Northwest Territories and the other demons that we have in the Northwest Territories that are taking Northerners from us. I do share concerns that MLA Lafferty highlighted, as well.

I also share the same concerns as my colleague from Nunakput, MLA Jacobson, in that over a quarter of people from the Northwest Territories are considered high risk, that COVID running rampant in communities would be absolutely devastating, and that we do need to be able to have some support for the orders of the Chief Public Health Officer in the Northwest Territories. My constituents have shared with me that largely they appreciate that the borders are closed and that does make them feel safer and that they do feel protection from that but that they are frustrated by the responses from the GNWT to support those orders, namely the communication from the GNWT and also through consistent policy foundation from the GNWT.

I understand from the Premier and her colleagues that this COVID secretariat would stand to fix some of those issues. I know from my constituents that items like ProtectNWT, 811, and policy and communications, border patrol through highways and airports are things that they're not willing to let go of. At the same time, people expect us in this room to make sure that the government is being fiscally responsible and is spending money wisely. I also share the comments from my colleague from Yellowknife North in that this money could be spent very, very effectively on things like co-investment fund and municipalities. Eight million dollars for our municipal funding gap would go a long way.

I have concerns about the GNWT being able to change the way that they are running the COVID secretariat without the added pressure to do so. When we look at our self-isolation centres, and we've heard a lot of different ideas this evening and throughout session about ways to reduce the cost of our self-isolation centres, but the isolation centres account for 54 percent of the overall COVID secretariat cost. My worry is that if there isn't an incentive to reduce the costs of that, namely the money just isn't available, then how will we ensure that we're not just funding a status quo COVID secretariat? A lot of times they say that necessity inspires change and if that necessity isn't there, how can we make sure that the isolation centres do change? My first question is: if there is not the support for the supplementary this evening for the COVID secretariat, what happens? If there is not the support for the full supplementary, as the MLA for Yellowknife mentioned removing money from the supplementary, then what happens? Thank you, Mr. Chair.