Thank you, Mr. Chair. Here's what CBC published in an analysis piece about this plan: Most of the plan is firmly focused on the government's own operations. For an economic recovery plan, it includes remarkably little discussion of the future of the economy.

This is what the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce had to say about the plan: The inclusion of vague action items like "seek to assist" the tourism, aviation, construction, hospitality and mining sectors to position for survival and eventual rebound fails to inspire confidence in our current government's ability to support the economy recovery for Yellowknife business community. The government has an obligation to do more than "seek" to support these critical industries. We need an actual plan with budgets and timelines.

Mr. Chair, I think this plan is a symptom of some systemic problems that I know all of this House are frustrated with. The government's communication has become so incredibly risk adverse that we can't even commit to assisting these industries. We have "to seek" to assist them. And there seems to be a fear of, you know, putting out a plan with clear targets and clear measurables and then not meeting them, as if that's the worst thing in the world. But I can tell you, Mr. Chair, that putting out a plan that basically says nothing, it just causes far more frustration.

And I think we're hamstrung by our own processes here. This week, we spent $5,750,000 to support the tourism industry. That was a great news story. I'm happy to see that we did that. I don't understand why that number was not the first thing in this plan. There is no budgetary commitments in this plan. I know the reason for that is because we can't put firm budgetary commitments and plans that haven't gone through the financial management board and made it through this House for fear that at some point, the money may not actually go through the multiple levels of approval. But, Mr. Speaker, the people of NWT wanted more. The Members wanted more. I encourage this Cabinet to find a way to put budgetary commitments in new action plans. I don't know how you have to do that. But I'm frustrated by the continuation of plans and strategies that don't have budgetary commitments in them. And often the budgetary commitments come after but already, we've lost a bunch of political capital in putting out a plan without those firm commitments.

Mr. Speaker, there's a few other things I would have liked to see in the plan. The plan is still talking about the potential of an Indigenous procurement policy. I believe that ship has sailed, and we could have committed to an Indigenous procurement policy and set out what that was. I prefer a benchmark for how much money will go to Indigenous-owned businesses and dev corps.

I've heard the minister of ITI talk about this. I believe we're on our way but I just -- I don't see how we didn't use this plan to get a good news story of what some of the specifics were going to be there.

Mr. Chair, I could go through many other areas, and I'll try and be brief. We have a net metering cap on renewable energy in this territory. More and more of our communities are reaching their 20 percent threshold on renewable energy, and we literally will not allow them to use free federal government money to build more renewable energy. We need to get rid of the net metering cap if we are going to be serious about a green, resilient, and productive economy going forward.

Mr. Chair, the Yukon has a plan to have 4800 electric vehicles on the road by 2030. Despite owning almost a thousand vehicles, we don't have one single electric vehicle. Make a symbolic gesture on this area.

Mr. Chair, I think it would be remiss for the plan not to talk about mining, and I know we're working on this area but we need a plan to settle land claims or to get -- move forward on this. Right now, some of the best mining land in the territory is stuck in land withdrawals with no path to settle claims and no path to, you know, to commit to land use planning that builds consent in to how that land will be going -- move forward. We seem to be in the worst -- worst of both worlds in this area. And I can tell you that no one is happy. The industry's not happy. Indigenous governments aren't happen that we continue to not make progress at the tables and I feel hesitant to even talk about land withdrawals because it has become just so convoluted to actually figure out a path forward where we are going to give the land back and, you know, get consent built into our resource projects to be a world leader in this area.

Mr. Chair, I know that all of these things cost money and economic plans are costly, but I think there's a few things we probably could have done that were, you know -- didn't cost us anything.

On the nonprofit sector, one of their number one complaints, as Cabinet well knows, is the year-to-year scrambling for funding from multiple funding pools. I think in the last previously for the whole-of-government approach to look how we're funding our non-profits, bundle it up and give them some multiyear funding to get out of COVID-19.

Mr. Chair, many things in this plan are -- they're hindered by the same old problems. Getting many things done in this territory is like pulling teeth and, you know, no one is ever happy with whatever you do. But there will always be naysayers, and we can't aim to make everyone happy, but this really looks like a plan that was designed by committee, and I think it has just increased frustration. And I didn't want to see that, Mr. Chair. I think this session we've done some good work. I think there was more money passed, you know, $750,000 for the poverty fund, but there's something disconnected between being able to put budgetary figures and future commitments, policy change commitments into plans. I think departments are so caught up in a multilevel process that if there's a chance that we're not actually going to finish a project, we just can't confirm it, but we're not doing ourselves any favors.

I will echo my colleague's comments that there's no place for the public to submit their views as where we're going to go with the NWT future economy. I think I hear great ideas every day from my constituents and I know they are frustrated by a lot of government processes, and our government is the biggest barrier in many cases to getting things done. And I just believe we are moving at a glacial pace and it does not reflect the emergency we're in.

I know committee is planning a public briefing on this, and I'm sure I will have further questions but I think there's much work to do to really address the systemic problem of, you know, not being able to commit to things and not being able to take a risk. And, you know, if we fail, then that's fine. At least explain what the barrier was. Thank you, Mr. Chair.