Thank you, Member for Range Lake. Members' statements. Colleagues, as it has been an hour since we started, with the rules that we agreed to go by yesterday, we will be taking a 10-minute break, as we don't have Pages in the House to refill your drinks or anything. We will give the Members 10 minutes and reconvene. Thank you.

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Thank you. I will now call the House back to order. Item 4, recognition of visitors in the gallery. There are a couple there. Item 5, reports of committees on the review of bills. Item 6, reports of standing and special committees. Item 7, returns to oral questions. Item 8, acknowledgements. Item 9, oral questions. Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Minister of Infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the Member for his questions. The Department of Infrastructure is continuing with our capital plan. We have had to have a bit of delay in our process to account for COVID, including the lack or want of southern or outside workers in small communities. This has delayed the implementation of some of our contracting at this point.

However, the Department of Infrastructure does plan to continue with most of our infrastructure projects going forward that we already had on the books. We have started to tweak and look at our procurement strategy. We have done a few things right now to make that a little bit more accessible to Northerners and favouring Northerners, in that we have removed the minimum scoring requirements for the RFPs and a few other tweaks. I believe that I sent you all an email about that last week.

We are starting with some small changes that we can make at the moment, but we are going to be executing a multi-department review of procurement, which will include BIP. It will be in conjunction with the Minister of Finance's department, as well as my two departments, ITI and Infrastructure. We recognize that procurement has some issues in the Northwest Territories. We are committed, as we have said in our mandate and priorities, to addressing those issues, and that is still the plan for Infrastructure going forward. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I would like the Minister to provide me with some comfort that the department will start to use tools, such as negotiated contracts and sole-source contracts, to the advantage of our northern businesses. Right now, what is happening is we still see contracts from the North going to southern contractors. There is always a reason why; there is always an excuse why, and we have to put a stop to that. I am looking to the Minister and her department to tell me how she's going to do it, and as soon as possible.

Yes, I completely do commit to making these changes. I think that, within the department, I have recognized that it is a much more complex situation than when I was first speaking to you about this. I do recognize that people are tired of excuses and tired of hearing, "We just have to do it this way," and playing it safe, because that is pretty much the messaging, is that the safest thing for me as a Minister is to put everything out to open tender, and then I protect myself.

That is not the way that we will be going forward, and I can guarantee and commit to that right now. We are already in discussions with Cabinet about some specific negotiated contracts, but, as well, a general conversation around direct, sole-source, and negotiated contracts and maximizing our dollars in the North. We definitely intend to go down that road.

I have already acknowledged that, at times, it's tough to move this government ship very quickly, and I acknowledge that it hasn't moved fast enough for some of the Members on the other side, but I continue to commit to making those improvements where I see fit. I do have to make sure, though, that I make informed changes and choices for my department, and I am recognizing, the more I am in this role, how little I actually know, and therefore, I do need to make sure we're making the right choices moving forward. I do commit to all of you that, at any time, if people do want to discuss specific contracts or this going forward more, we can.

We saw how fast the Department of Health responded to COVID, and we saw what the government could actually do, how fast they can react. I am hoping that the Department of Infrastructure is going to be the same way, and not kind of drag this out with, "Wait until we get panels in place," and coming up with more excuses.

One of the problems that I see is that the staff, no doubt, are working hard, whether they are at home or not, but one of the problems that I see is that we don't have a lot of people in the offices. We have office buildings in the communities that have separate offices, and we have nobody working in them. That has to change. I would like to see that change sooner than later, and I would like to know what the department is doing about that.

A lot of the direction around the workplaces and such came from the CPHO's Office, and Infrastructure and ITI just had to accommodate it like everybody else in the workplace. There was a whole-of-government conversation around our workspaces, but I do agree with what the Member is saying. Now we are past the reaction stage where we were just trying to keep everybody safe, and now we do need to look at being proactive and getting people back to work.

I do think that having people go back to the offices will actually increase productivity. I know, for myself, when I started coming to the Leg again a couple of weeks ago, when I was able to leave my home, that actually had a huge amount of change in my mental health about work, and just feeling like I was more productive. I was able to also, then, separate work from home, which I am hearing is a big concern of many of our employees. They are not able to deal with doing their work and having their children at home, and then they are finding that their work hours are extending well into the evenings. For some people, that's great. They're flexible; they work in the morning, and then they work in the evening. However, we do need to get back to doing business in the Northwest Territories.

Infrastructure did have a large role in the pandemic around the borders and the supply chain and procurement and PPE. We were quite busy with doing that. We did have contract issues that we had to look at for contracts that were ongoing, as far as whether they were still going to be able to be executed and whether we were opening the government up to liability. There was a lot within Infrastructure that we had to deal with before we could start turning out the contracts again and determining how we were going to do that. It has been, probably, a little slower than the Member would like, but I do commit to taking the points you have made about the offices back to my department and having that conversation with them this week.

Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess, in saying all this, I think that it is important that the Department of Health and the Department of Infrastructure work together to coordinate moving ahead. Everything went so fast, and I understand that, you know, the Department of Health probably had to take the lead and do stuff without really having time to talk to anybody else, but now we have that time. How is your department working with the Department of Health to make sure that this goes ahead smoothly and quickly? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

All of the departments have, quite often, ADM committees, working committees. They also have DM working committees. I would say that my department and the Department of Health have actually had a lot of conversation over the last while, but you are correct. There was a direction coming from Health and Social Services that needed to happen so that we could protect worker health and safety.

Maybe now is the time that Infrastructure does need to push forward a little harder and say, "Okay, we need to take a little bit more risk in having people back to work so that we can move forward the process of government." I would say that we did step back and, really, our priority and our focus was ensuring the health and safety of the residents. We also went into issues with WSCC if people are not feeling safe to go back into their workplace. They have every right to refuse unsafe work.

Right now, what the department is doing is we are looking at our buildings, all of the buildings that we manage for the GNWT, and we are trying to put as many measures in place, or engineering controls, so that we minimize the exposure of people who are working. Right now, we have things like sensor faucets going in, looking at no-touch doors, those types of things. Right now, that is the work that is going on with Infrastructure so that we can get government employees back to work. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.

Merci, monsieur le President. My questions are for the Premier, who is coordinating the GNWT's pandemic planning and recovery. My statement earlier today reflected on some of the lessons learned to date. I recognize that we are still in the midst of the pandemic, but we must have learned some lessons and best practices by now. Has the Premier begun to plan for a thorough and public review of GNWT's pandemic planning and response, and what sorts of specific measures or steps can we expect to see? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Honourable Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Looking for a plan of our response for COVID-19, absolutely, we are looking at it. However, I do want to be careful with that, because COVID-19 is still here. We are still experiencing things at a rapid rate. It has slowed down a bit, but, by the second wave, we are expecting that changes will come pretty rapidly.

We have been in the process now of changing our services, providing services that we needed and programs that we needed to accompany people, but some other things will need to be done. For example, the municipal and community government, EMO is the one that stands in my head, the most prominent at this point. EMO, the emergency management organization, was meant to be a program for community programs, community issues, floods, forest fires, et cetera. This pandemic made it worldwide, and so, at that point, it became more of a Cabinet decision.

Those are things that, going into the future, will probably be a legislation that I would want changed in this Assembly. At this point, we are still in the middle of it. We have only just begun it. It would be inappropriate at this time to go looking at changing legislation right now, recognizing that Cabinet already has control of it, but it will be something that we need to do in this Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I want to thank the Premier for that. I think that I almost heard her say that she is willing to look at the Emergency Measures Act. That's a good thing. I have lots of other ideas. I am sure that the Chief Public Health Officer is going to conduct some kind of review, as well, but the review needs to be done in a public fashion. Maybe the Auditor General can give us some ideas, as well.

I want to move on, Mr. Speaker. As MLAs, we collectively developed a set of priorities, and then Cabinet went off and developed a mandate that was tabled and discussed in the House. Would the Premier agree that, given the pandemic, it is time to review and update those priorities and the mandate?

A couple of months ago, when COVID-19 hit us, it was early March. Towards late March, I started to realize that life was changing really quickly. We were having to supplement areas that we had never put money in before; programs were closing up; offices were closing up; we were looking at a new way of doing business. It made me wonder, Mr. Speaker. We spent months going over the mandate, making it based on the priorities, and I started to wonder, "Do we have the money? Is it still the priority?"

I gave direction, actually, at the end of March for the departments to start looking at the mandate and actually looking at what they can do. I am not going to give too much right here, because it is process, and I do believe that it's important to work with Regular MLAs. We have put an offer in to standing committee, my understanding is, and so, at that point, we would like to be able to talk to the Members to review where we are with the mandate and if we need any changes, because, in an initial review on our side, it looks like a lot of the mandate can still be done.

I want to thank the Premier for that. I agree that it is time to review the mandate. Probably, you need to collectively look at the priorities we developed. I want to say that GNWT's economic assistance programs to small businesses have been very slow and uneven. I am going to have a lot more to say about that, but I want to ask the Premier about overall planning for economic recovery. We have had an initial presentation without specifics, but can the Premier tell us now how the views of Regular MLAs are going to be incorporated, and when does she anticipate this effort really starting to take off?

Again, most people, when they talk about COVID-19, people have seen the economic impacts and people across the world, across Canada have been talking about economic recovery. I think we are one of the only jurisdictions that is talking about economic and social recovery. Perhaps because we are a small population, we had the benefit of actually seeing what we could do in a short amount of time. So I think that involving MLAs was a commitment that we made at the beginning of this session. It has been long. It does take a lot more time, but I made a commitment that it would not be Cabinet plus three, and I will maintain that commitment, which means that, as we work forward, when we develop our economic and social recovery plan, we have proposed to Members that we have a joint committee that is made up of Cabinet and the Regular Members so that the Regular Members are actively engaged, not just giving information, but actually engaged in the process of defining what our future will be.

Thank you, Honourable Premier. Final supplementary, Member for Frame Lake.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Premier. I do believe that she is committed to an inclusive process. Clearly, there have been some success stories during this pandemic, and I mentioned some of those in my statement. We have got social programs that are starting to deal with homelessness. We have got a managed alcohol program, wage subsidy for low-income workers, payrolling of Income Assistance and more. Can the Premier share her thoughts about how we can keep these significant gains and how we can continue to plan for economic recovery at the same time? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Those who were here in the last Assembly would remember one time I had been asked in the House about where I stood. I said people have called me many names, but they haven't called me a name, but people have called me at times a socialist. I don't think I am really that radical, but people have said that. I am all about universal childcare and guaranteed living wage. I think it is part of the answer. I do not believe the perception that people will just sit back and be lazy. I think that would tire people very quickly. I have already started to put the fuel in the fire.

As I meet with our Premiers across Canada, with our Prime Minister, I have already been saying to them things such as, "You've given the wage increase. You are giving these out to people. How can you ask us to take it back?" So I think that that is really important. It is a matter of not only what we do as a government, what the federal government does. I have been working very closely with our three territories on both sides, and we are looking at providing a win-win to the federal government. These programs, getting people in housing, giving people almost a guaranteed wage, giving people more access to childcare are all things that all of us in this House should be proud of. It would be a sin, Mr. Speaker, to take them back. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Premier. Oral questions. Member for Monfwi.