Thank you. Yeah, so presently, the office you're looking at is out of Yellowknife but we do have assistant fire marshals in the communities and are in the regions and they work on that as well. As the deputy minister said, there's a couple of vacant positions but we utilize other regions there. So we feel comfortable presently that this budget is adequate for what we need to do. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Thank you, Madam Chair. One final question is that I know the Minister said yesterday about the work of the communities. I just want to make sure that when they work with the communities that it's either we're going to follow the -- the fire code from building to building, which is 40 feet, and that is considered in their design when -- like, for example, the community N'dilo and Dettah, we have a community plan but right now the lots are 50 by a hundred. In actual fact, if we were to follow the fire marshal's office, it should actually be 70 feet by a hundred feet, 17 by a hundred feet and so on. So I just want to make sure that that's considered when you guys are working with the First Nation governments. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of MACA.

Yeah, so I'm not going to get into specifics because I don't know the specifics, but I can guarantee you that our staff will be working with the Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments to help them address these concerns. And we will make sure that the fire marshal's office and the regional offices are aware of this concern. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any further questions under public safety from Members?

Seeing none, Municipal and Community Affairs, public safety, operations expenditure summary, 2022-2023 Main Estimates, $3,372,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. We will now turn to Municipal and Community Affairs, regional operations, on 351 with information items on 352, 353, and 354. Questions? Don't all jump at once. Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you. Minister of MACA.

I'll open and then I'll turn to the deputy minister. So we allocated -- or Cabinet and -- based on what our priorities was was to find $5 million. We're at 4.1 or $4.2 million right now. And we will be able to get the $5 million for the next -- we'll hit the $5 million mark at the next one.

But as for the other questions, with your permission, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy minister Gareau.

Thank you. Minister?

Yeah, and just recently we had the opportunity to have a conversation with the President from NWTAC, and we've come up with some conversations and some ideas that they would like us to process or try to address moving forward. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member for Yellowknife North.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Well, as the Minister knows, and I talked to him about, I submitted a written question setting out the funding gap by each community. Because if you go and look, the last public information you can find is from the 2014 review. But I'm hoping the Minister could speak to the willingness of the department to find a way to publish this going forward by, you know, each of the three categories for each of the communities and perhaps even, you know, just a bit of an explanation of how those numbers were calculated or how we got there. I'll note finding real time figures and data for the deficit is very, very hard. Is there any work being done to make sure we publish this information going forward? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of MACA.

Thank you. No, there isn't anything right now. Thank you.

Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I sure hope the Minister answers my written question then.

I guess, you know, there is no secret that all municipalities across Canada are experiencing very tough pressures on their infrastructure, and it's no secret that we as a government are also doing that. I'll note there's a number of relatively -- well, no, there's a number of massive kind of federal programmings funding community infrastructure right now. Some have different expiration dates, and quite a few of them flow through GNWT.

Can the Minister speak to any kind of lobbying efforts or work we're doing with NWTAC and the communities as federal counterparts to make sure that, you know, that the systemic issue of municipal infrastructure being underfunded is being addressed? Because if we're not going to make some progress here against the inflationary pressures, perhaps we can at least, you know, work on things like gas tax and the community infrastructure bank and stuff like that. So can the Minister speak to any of the kind of asks we're make to the federal government? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of MACA.

So, yes, so presently when new funding comes out from the federal government, we're there trying to see if we can access it, if we can help with the municipality. As I said previously, and I think the last question that the Member asked, we did reach out to NWTAC. They've come up with a process that they're -- tri-territorially that they're talking about and whether there's a different -- three different avenues that we're working on together collaboratively and they are in the process of working with us. And there may be potential for the three territorial ECs to meet with the three Ministers on this and then they're potentially reaching out to -- I talked to -- to have conversations with the Premiers on that. So this is a very live issue. We understand the challenges. People have heard the concerns on this floor here today and elsewhere. So we are working on it, and we are trying to address this difficult challenge. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member for Yellowknife North.