Thank you, Member for Nahendeh. Members' statements. Item 4, returns to oral questions. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. Item 6, replies to budget address, day 6 of 7. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker. As the Member from Hay River mentioned earlier, he had a few days to ponder. You think about what you are going to say that morning. A lot of times, you put together your statements. I had a few days to think about this, and I am glad I did. You have to remind yourself that our jobs are not a sprint; it's a marathon. We have to think about what we are going to say. Originally, there was some developments that happened in my riding I was very upset about. I thought, "You know what, I'm going to just take my time," and sure enough, some things happened. Some developments happened that happened for the better, and I'm glad they did.

Overall, I'm glad to see some positive changes for the North, for my riding of Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh in the past week alone as I mentioned. Overall, when I speak here today, that doesn't make my message any less pressing, but I still want a praising but firm address for our colleagues on the other side. As the Minister of Finance quite eloquently put it last week, we are pushing forward as a government with cautious optimism, and I agree with that statement.

Before I go into some of the politics of all this, Mr. Speaker, I want us to start off with a positive memory and positive thoughts. I think that's a good, important thing to do and not get into thinking and negative thoughts because that's not a place where we should go as leaders.

With that, not too long ago, I still remember as a kid going up to visit my dad, one could take off with their little ones in the summer right here downtown. For example, there was Raven Mad Days going on. You could hear the live music, kids running around doused in shaving cream. Those were good memories. There would be local businesses selling their goods. There would be food carts and artisans selling their creations. Really good memories. I know many of us are really missing those things such as drum dances. Drum dances around a bonfire, the camaraderie, talking with elders, talking with your friends, laughing, hand games, talent shows, and jigging contests up North. We miss those things that had happened. I hope we get back to that soon because that's community spirit, Mr. Speaker. Through that, I want everybody in the North to try to keep pushing forward, keep thinking positive because we're going to get back there eventually. I mentioned last year in an online address, we need to still continue to go along with patience and vigilance.

Going back to some of our political discussions, Mr. Speaker, I am happy we are starting to see some gradual changes in our policies in all our departments. Some notable changes that I've seen so far are some long-awaited changes coming through to our Business Incentive Policy and procurement policies, for example.

The main message I would like to leave my colleagues is we need a balanced approach when we look at this budget or any other budget. Listening to a lot of my colleagues in the room, when we write down our messages, we come from all walks of life. Our ideologies, we come from different political beliefs and backgrounds. I think, overall, we're starting to see some changes that we can agree on, and we're starting to get some consensus. That's very, very, very comforting.

There're some things I think we could still work on. I'm still genuinely worried about the economy because there's still some lackadaisical messages. We're still a little bit lazy, for lack of a better word, in terms of getting a plan, an economic recovery plan from our government, and we're still hearing it on this side of the House. We still need to find a clear plan. I am hoping that we can hear some solid timelines, some clear guidelines, something come up through the works eventually, like very soon because, the longer we wait, it will just be a detriment to our economy and our people in the North.

I'm going back a bit talking about the BIP policy earlier. Last year, I joked, sitting here in the House when I did my budget address that I thought it was comical that Walmart, an American company, was BIP listed. This is no longer funny to me anymore. It is a year later. There is something very broken with our system, with our incentive policies, if they exclude homegrown Indigenous businesses such as Denendeh Investments, for them giving excuses why they can't be BIP listed. Looking through that, I can't think of any other way than saying there's some racism, racist barriers there. There's no other way to explain it. You can't draw any other conclusion. We need to change that. We need to move away from that thinking. If there are people in our government that think that way, they don't need to be there anymore. We need to get rid of them. I'm really firm on that. I can't stress that enough.

Mr. Speaker, I'm hoping that our government tightens up our business policies and procedures when it comes to policies such as the procurement and the BIP processes. We need to be stricter with our policies and tighten up the wording for these directives, and they need to come from each and every department so they leave little room for manipulation or interpretation. We've got to close up those loopholes, period. If we stick to that road, we stick on that road, there will be more inclusion and less exclusion from our northern business and our people working in the North. Above all else, we need to stop economically leakage out of the territory. Keep territorial money in the territory, wherever we can and whatever we can.

Mr. Speaker, again, I'm going back to turn my attention to our Northern and Aboriginal businesses. In a few statements this past year, I really tried to drive home this message of, again, keeping the money in the territory. I keep thinking of this term. I don't know if it was ever brought up, but I was thinking about it when I was writing this, "territorialism." We've got to think about ourselves. I'm going to keep on saying it until I am blue in the face. We need to scrutinize every contract, every hire, every dollar from the public purse, and try to keep it here. We need to look after our own.

The key is you're not just to sort of help our people survive, but we need to see them thrive. We need to see our businesses thrive and not just keep our noses above the water. Right now, we're not going in that direction. Through all this in my research, I heard an interesting statistic from one of our business leaders that, for every dollar that the government invests into business, it translates into $7 into our local economies. That's huge. Through that, I thought about this more. The pandemic really is painting businesses into a corner. I don't want our government to put ourselves in a situation where it's basically an economic triage where, eventually, we're going to have to decide which businesses we're going to bail out and which we're going to let go under. I really don't want to go down that road and have that burden. I don't want that to be our legacy.

Mr. Speaker, the definition of free enterprise is when private companies compete for profit without government interference. I can tell you right now, because of this pandemic, the laissez-faire way of doing things or hands-off approach from the government has gone out the window, but I get it. I am realistic. We are doing this to help save lives through the COVID pandemic and to keep the number of infections down. To do that, I would like to tell our residents again, as mentioned before by one of my colleagues here, we all need to do our part to get immunized and follow directions from the medical experts.

Mr. Speaker, with that, what can we do as a territory to help our businesses, our corporate citizens in the North? One message I really want to drive home is to buy North. Over Christmas, you go out, you check your mail, and you see that little logo with the little arrow at the end, the Amazon logo. So many people found that it was just much more convenient. I know that there's a pandemic going on. They're afraid to go out and mingle, go out to the stores, and go to your local Northern or to places like Overlander. Those businesses are up North, and we're not doing that. I think, before we hit that click button to do our online shopping, we need to think about our mom-and-pop stores in the North, because these mom-and-pop stores are the backbone of the North. They create jobs. They help people put food on our tables, help pay their bills, and the more we click on the online shopping button to help out the southern firms, the more we are going to hurt our own people. I want to make sure that we do that. I am guilty of that, and I am going to do my part to do better in that department. With that, I urge all our residents to get out and go shop when you can, and just help our economy to keep chugging along because that's what we have to do. We have to keep persevering through this.

Despite all this, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to go on with our northern businesses. I do see some great opportunities for our territory. One opportunity I see is in remediation. Again, it's all about thinking through it and listening. I did hear my colleague from Frame Lake mention remediation this earlier in the week, and I do believe he is onto something. A lot of us don't agree with what he says, but he's been here a long time and he is onto something. In speaking with some of the business leaders in my riding, I was told that the NWT is poised to become a world leader in mine remediation. In Chief Drygeese territory alone, there are six abandoned sites along the Ingraham Trail that the YKDFN want cleaned up, and I did not even mention the Giant Mine remediation yet. Right now, the financial responsibility lies with the federal government under GNWT control as part of devolution. This is a great partnership opportunity, and I really hoping this can gain some traction in the life of this Assembly and get things going. Again, it goes back to jobs, training opportunities, contracts, keeping the money here.

Again, I mentioned I was quite angry about one item, and that item I was referring to was the Frontier Lodge. I'm going to move to the other side of the lake, Mr. Speaker. Last year, the LKDFN, Lutselk'e Dene First Nation, sent out correspondence to our government, to the Department of MACA in particular, to help get the lodge off the ground and operating for last year's season. These talks broke down. This is unacceptable. It took over a year to finally get some movement on this file to help get the lodge operating again. To give a bit of background for everybody, the Frontier Lodge was owned by an out-of-territory entity not too long ago. In December 2019, that ownership changed to the LKDFN. Prior to that, there were no issues in terms of permitting, licensing, and red tape to let them operate in peace. Since that changeover to an Aboriginal business, meaning the LKDFN, they were suddenly faced with permitting barriers and red tape. How do you explain this? Again, it just goes back to that discrimination piece. There is no explanation. It shouldn't take a year to get back to an Indigenous government for something that is fairly simple to fix. Overall, when I do my oral questions here, I think the Minister will give us some update. I'm glad we're starting to get things moving again in terms of that business, and we need to see that.

Again, everything always comes full circle. I mentioned in last year's budget address we dealt with the Depression in the 1930s. How did they dig themselves out of that? Infrastructure. The U.S. and Canada, they put all their eggs in a basket. They had to; they had no choice because of the stock market crash. They had to put their money into bridges. Sorry. My colleague from Nunakput just made me laugh. They had to put their money into bridges, highways, infrastructure, to keep people working, and it's all about trying to keep our economy moving along. If history has taught us anything, investment in infrastructure is a good thing. It will be good for short-term measures, but if it's done right, there could be some long-term opportunities through that.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I am hoping we can give our economic players a fighting chance, keep them in the game, and bring back our economy to vibrant state once again, to get back to life the way it once was, get our kids running around in the streets down in Raven Mad Days, covered in shaving cream, laughing, and seeing our local artisans and our businesses up and running again. It doesn't seem like it's going to happen right now, but we will get back there. I want to get that positive message out to our Northerners. I really believe we can get there. Marsi cho, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Replies to budget address. Item 7, acknowledgements. Item 8, oral questions. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister of ECE. Yesterday, we had our economy theme day and I asked the Minister my first two questions, and I was so excited about the responses that I got that I accidentally omitted one of them, so here I am going to ask that question today. I would like to know: how will this transformation of the polytechnic grow space related to research in Inuvik? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and you can't blame the Member. I talked about new jobs that are being created in Inuvik and the great things that will be happening there as part of the transformation. Transforming into a polytechnic university means making research a bigger part of the institution. As part of the transformation planning, part of the work is under way, including building research capacity. Increased research capacity will come with increasing staff and expanding facilities. The college is already hiring three chairs; I mentioned one of them yesterday, the Climate Change Adaptation Research Chair located in Inuvik, as well as a chair located in Fort Smith and one located in Yellowknife.

The institution will really evolve under the governance of the board, but we are already planning for Inuvik to be, really, the research centre of the post-secondary. It will be where the most research capacity is, given what's already there. The Western Arctic Research Centre out of Aurora Campus is a remarkable facility, and I am confident that it will continue to be expanded in terms of staff and facilities going forward. There are already plans in place to replace the warehouse facility at the Western Arctic Research Centre with something bigger that is going to attract more research partners.

We've already gained partial federal funding for this, and we are looking for the rest so that we can get this work under way. In addition, the college is also working on implementing a research services team that will be tasked with building research capacity, both inside the college and among other potential partners throughout the territory, such as Indigenous governments, communities, industry, and non-governmental organizations. That's going to be a way to bring research dollars into the territory, not just for the college, but for everyone. The research team is expected to bring several more positions in addition to the ones I've talked about to Inuvik, as well as Yellowknife and Fort Smith.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Thebacha.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister responsible for human resources tell us the total number of summer students who were hired for the summer of 2020? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Thebacha. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In 2020, we had 236 students hired as summer students; 228 of those were Northwest Territories residents. Thank you.

Can the Minister tell us if the Government of the Northwest Territories will be initiating any further holds on the hiring of summer students for 2021 as done in 2020?

We are certainly not planning on any holds, Mr. Speaker. We didn't plan on any holds last year. Unfortunately, COVID-19 did create unexpected challenges. Given where we are at right now, I certainly am happy to say that there is no anticipation of any holds.

Can the Minister tell us if she anticipates the number of summer student hires for 2021 to be greater than the number of hires for 2020? If so, can she provide us with an estimate as to the number of summer student hires so far?

I do certainly anticipate the number of student hires to be much higher. In fact, I hope it is a particular good year for summer students. I can say, as I mentioned earlier, there were 236 hires last year. Typically, we have upwards of 600 students who register for the program. Last year, we only had 460 who registered for the program. As of right now, there are already 205 students registered for hire. There are seven who have already been hired or pending, and we are only in early February. I do think the numbers right now are looking good and hopeful, again, that that will lead to a much higher number this summer.

Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Thebacha.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last year, I asked the Minister if the department of human resources would create a hiring contingency plan in the event of an emergency such as COVID-19. Can the Minister tell us what progress the department has made in this area, specifically regarding summer student employment? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The summer student program is very important tool that the Government of the Northwest Territories has to hire students, to introduce them to government work, to introduce managers to potential future hires as a recruitment tool, and a retention tool, as well.

As it was last year, Mr. Speaker, once the COVID-19 pandemic went through the spring and the summer and workers returned to their offices, we were able to bring some students on. As I said, 236 students were hired. It, right now, does depend on each department, what their needs are. What we are trying to communicate, again, number one is that it's for students to register for the program, but then also for departments to be able to communicate their own needs and to be conscious of the fact that we have a number of students who we want to have returning.

In short, Mr. Speaker, there's not a set contingency plan. It will, of course, depend department on department, and it depends on what may or may not come this summer. Right now, it is certainly our hope that we learned a lot from last year's process, and we learned a lot about how to get people back to work. Relying on that, we are looking forward to a good season. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Monfwi.

Masi, Mr. Speaker. [Translation] When I made my Member's statement, I commented on caribou management. I also mentioned the hunting zone and how difficult it is for people to go hunting. I would like to ask the ENR Minister a question. Before I ask that question, I want to say this question that I'm posing right now is coming directly from the elders. It's their words. [Translation ends]

When I first spoke about the mobile zone in my Member's statement, I would like to ask a few questions that have been outlined here by an elder in my constituency. First and foremost, they would like to know: when was the first mobile zone initiated or established, and who made that decision? Mr. Speaker, masi.

Thank you, Member for Monfwi. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The mobile zone was established in 2015. It involved the Tlicho government and ENR. We looked at it. We also looked at having discussions in 2018. It started in 2015, and we have had further discussions in 2018 about the mobile zone. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The next question that another elder from the community asked is: this mobile zone keeps getting bigger every year, which makes it more challenging and difficult for harvesters to be out there and harvest food for their families. They're asking: why is it getting bigger every year when we have the opportunity to go out there? Basically, that's what one of the elders was asking. What's causing the increase in the line?

First of all, the perfect storm happened. The Beverly herd and the Bathurst herd and the Bluenose East herds kind of amalgamated together, so it was a concern. We also have our Bathurst collared animals out there, and so it has been impacted where everybody is. The Beverly, like I said, has moved in with it. What has happened is it's a similar size, but it has kind of moved into the east further, which has had an impact on the road and that. It's similar to last year, but it has been the perfect storm, and unfortunately, this is the situation that has occurred.

Obviously, the elders predicted what kind of answers the Minister was going to give. There are three herds. That means there was an increase in population of the caribou herd. That should allow us to harvest in that area, not discouraging us to hunt, Mr. Speaker. Another elder, because I spoke to a few of them, who called me just this past week, asked: how are the elders engaged and involved in the decision-making of this mobile zone? I understand there's the Wek'eezhii board, but elders are asking: how are we involved as elders? Mr. Speaker, these are the words of the elders.