Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Yellowknife North.

Can the Minister explain what would happen if we didn't build this building? What else would we do instead? Or what would be at stake or what would be risked if we didn't build this building? I understand that there are convenience issues, efficiency issues, but can the Minister explain what's the alternate scenario of not building this building? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, part of the -- sorry, it's not necessarily an issue of convenience as much as also an issue of safety. Currently part of the facility has a small engine shop in a building that's essentially an office building. There's also the fact that our staff have been -- the warehouse is located in the basement so there are a lot of challenges with moving equipment and supplies in and out of the basement which creates significant risk to the staff. And the warehouse at King Street is a significantly old warehouse that is very outdated, hasn't been renovated in many, many years. It was built in the early '60s. So the operation out of Fort Smith also supports all of the regions across the Northwest Territories, so it is the headquarters function, and the warehouse and the supports support all of the five regions across the NWT, and this also is the location that provides all of the support for the fire operations across the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. When this project was thought up, was there alternatives that were identified in a, you know, project proposal in terms of how else they challenges might be addressed? And does that document still exist somewhere? I know that it's -- we're a little bit further along into the project now but I'm just trying to understand how a project like this gets ranked as sort of top priority as a major new capital building in our territorial budget when it seems that there are alternatives to building a $32 million building. But were other possible solutions to those challenges considered and compared to both the cost and implications of building a new building? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, there were. So maybe a little bit of history. So we started -- the original planning started for this project back in 2015 with the conceptual design. After the conceptual design phase, in 2022 we did put this project out as a modified P3 through Infrastructure as another alternative way of doing it, but the costs that came back on the proposed P3 project were out of the scope of the budget so that specific approach was not taken, and we went back to taking the approach of the design putting it out to tender as the project moved forward. And so I'll pass it to Dr. Kelly to add additional detail. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'll go to the deputy minister.

Okay, thank you. I'll go to the Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll just quickly go to another project I wanted to know about on this list which is a project down on the Ingraham Trail which is within my riding. If the Minister could explain a bit more about what is this 80-foot detection tower that is going to be built on the trail, where exactly on the trails you know, and explain what are some of the purposes of that new project. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, so this is part of the territorial detection network. So a number of sites, I believe to date there's been 12. We have 12 detection sites, nine of those would be camera-based. This would be the same type of setup where it would be a remote camera installation that would allow for remote observation of the area. The specific location on the trail, I don't have that information currently at my fingertips. But it is part of a much larger territory-wide project to install these infrastructure detection sites near communities to ensure that we have adequate coverage to detect forest fire activity within a zone that could potentially impact a community at a very quick rate. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay thank you. Next on my list now I got is the Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So the ECC has received its report into -- or its after action report that had a number of recommendations. Many of those were capital recommendations that are -- I think you could find here quite clearly. So does the Minister feel that the investment by these expenditures is sufficient to meet the recommendations in that report? Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this capital plan was developed prior to the report, the after action review being released, and some of the projects within this plan certainly do address some of the concerns raised through the after action review but they don't necessarily cover all of those. A lot of these projects were supported by an initiative from the federal government on a three-to-one cost sharing basis. And so what ECC did was took their allocation for capital and used that to leverage the federal government dollars to get -- to catch up on some of the backlog capital projects that were lagging behind. It's quite a demand within our budget and it certainly did take some of the years off of where we could have potentially landed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'll go to the Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Could the Minister point out, like, some kind of -- some of those high level investments that meet the recommendations of the after action report. Like, the most significant pieces in this list that could help meet those -- the new -- or the need that's left unfilled that's called for in the report. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So specifically to pick out individual projects, I think that overall a lot of the -- we look at -- we have communication projects. We have the detection projects. We have additional -- like, in here we have the wild land fire trucks, we have the -- sorry, the value protection trailers. So these are all pieces of infrastructure that are designed to support communities to ensure that the communities around the territories have the resources within their communities to support the community as well as ECC in how we are able to quickly respond to incidents. Currently now we have wild land fire engines in the South Slave essentially and in Yellowknife region. We don't have that type of infrastructure currently up in the Beaufort Delta. So, you know, that's one example where now we will have more infrastructure available to the departments in all of the regions in an effort to come across and have a consistent approach across the NWT. And part of our plan is we've gone through time -- and this started a number of years ago -- was trying to have consistent infrastructure in all regions and at all bases, so irregardless of where our employees go within NWT the equipment is the same. So the training that they receive they can use irregardless of the region or location that they're in. So that's part of how this infrastructure plan supports the overarching goals of the report from the after action review. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Range Lake.

Thank you. And it's the -- does the territorial fire centre factor into those recommendations as well? Thank you.