Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have been waiting patiently for this Cabinet to present its post-COVID economic recovery plan, and I'm starting to think they are at a bit of a loss. If they're looking for ideas, they have to look no further than the great constituency of Yellowknife North where $947 million will be spent over the next 18 years remediating the Giant Mine site. However, the GNWT seems to have absolved itself of any of the responsibility to capture the economic potential of the Giant Mine remediation project. This is to say nothing against the project team and ENR, who are doing an amazing job ensuring that remediation is done properly from an environmental perspective, but environmental scientists are not economists, procurement experts, or lobbyists, nor should we ask them to be.

If we need a model for how to build our remediation economy, look no further than what ITI does to support the mining economy. We lobby hard. We attend conferences. We have positions dedicated to supporting the sector. We mandate benefit agreements. We negotiate socioeconomic agreements. We can use this project to build an industry in our territory, but we are failing to capture one of the largest economic development opportunities in our history. It's not just Giant Mine, Mr. Speaker. It's the sumps in the Beaufort-Delta. It's Cameron Hills. It's Norman Wells. It's Ptarmigan Mine, and hundreds of other federal contaminated sites across the North. There are decades of work to be done, and we need to demand a larger role in doing it. We need to be at the federal Treasury Board asking for northern labour requirements or management of some of the contracts. We need to be monitoring the socioeconomic outcomes of the projects and recording that data. We need to train the next generation of specialists in our polytechnic.

Mr. Speaker, the Giant Mine Oversight Board has been advocating for this work since 2016, with little success and little response from either the GNWT or the federal government. The YKDFN have recently launched a petition calling on the federal government to comply. Remediating the North's contaminated sites is an act of reconciliation, a massive economic driver, and leaves a better future for next generations. So, Mr. Speaker, let's get a plan in place and build a remediation economy that makes the North leaders in Canadian remediation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.