Initially, when this was brought back to our attention back in, I think it could have been June or this past summer, I think I was totally surprised about what was forming in terms of COVID for $87 million. That was the price tag put to this project at that time. Then, in subsequent questioning to the Premier on the floor of the House, I wasn't getting answers to many of my questions. Probably one of the biggest ones I had was: was there any absolute thought given to this process? Was there a think-tank group to look at ways we could do this without breaking our bank because as things progress, we find that, and probably the Finance Minister was even saying it herself, that there was no guarantee that the federal government will throw in any more funds. They did for the $23.4 million, but it's like any of our other major projects. It's the 75-cent dollar that we've got here. We have to put in 25 of our own money.

My concern was: we're taking it from other programs and services to fund this secretariat. We made suggestions, I've always mentioned them, the public health emergency, plus we began with the state of emergency, which gives you the power to direct staff, to recruit from within our workforce of almost 6,000 people. I stated people would have stepped up to the plate and want to be part of this initiative. I stated at that time, most of them will say yes. They'll have a story for their grandchildren at that point, saying, "Yes. This is what I did." For the $23 million, we throw out lots of ideas; we throw out suggestions. Nothing gets listened to, nothing.

We still have border check stops that no one is happy with because they still see Alberta plates, BC plates; even this summer, there were Quebec plates driving around in the Northwest Territories. It's a free for all. Then we have a situation on Fort Liard, where we didn't even give them the due diligence there to put actual people at that border crossing. Rather, they put an unmanned gate. There is nobody around there because we're hearing stories of vehicles and quads and everything going around the gates. It's not even manned. We're doing a real sloppy job. I don't know what the situation is up by the Dempster, whatever at the border there, or what's the situation there. Things haven't really improved that greatly there. People of my K'atlodeeche, they keep wanting to put up security, and they have. Fort Providence they had it there, now they took it down, now they've got it back up again because that's how concerned they are about people coming into the communities.

One of my Member's statements was the authority that the Chief Public Health Officer has in granting exemptions without consultations with First Nations communities or with the communities, community leaderships. We had an incident that really put that to the test where the CPHO granted an exemption to a family, and the community was up in arms. These people just came from Edmonton, and Edmonton is a hotspot for us. It's just south of us, with a very many cases of the coronavirus there. Especially, it's starting to hit the major hospitals in that area. I'm not going to say that I'm totally against having something in place.

Like I said before, we could use the local workforce. I think I mentioned it, too, in my Member's statement: Pierre Elliott Trudeau, to enforce something one time, there was an incident in Quebec; he invoked the War Measures Act. He had the authority to do what he wanted to do with his people. That's why I'm saying. You could do the same thing, declare a state of emergency or something to put it back, and you could make things happen. Let's try to look at ways we can keep our costs down so we're not affecting other programs and services. These are the type of things that we don't want to have to negotiate between what's good for the people. They can still be done, and I still believe that we should look at what the federal government gave us was $23 million. Let's make it work within that budget. I'm pretty sure we could get pretty much close to that.

We've got lots of frivolous travel. The medical travel is okay. The frivolous ones are people just going up and down, in and out of the territory at will. My God, what are we doing to control that? I saw on a Facebook post; I copied it, and I sent it to the CPHO. I think the Premier was in it, too. Someone was coming up from the South with a trailer of goods. I said, "What is going on with this?" I got an email back saying, "That's okay. They've probably got a self-isolation plan already," but they didn't know themselves. They didn't even check that.

We've still got a flawed system here, a flawed secretariat. They want to do it for $87 million. Let's try this $23 million first. It's the federal government's money, not ours from the territory. I would prefer to see it go that way rather than spend an astronomical amount of money on something that's just not going to fix everything. Those are my comments related to the secretariat expenditures. I wish you would really heed a lot of what we say here on this side of the House because there's experience on this side. Mahsi.