This is page numbers of the Hansard for the 20th Assembly, 1st Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was know.

Topics

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Caitlin Cleveland

Caitlin Cleveland Kam Lake

Thank you very much. I believe that it is year-round, but I want to -- if you wait two seconds, I've got a staff member typing. But yes -- yes, we have summer -- or staff on site in the summertime and so this would be for the additional months but certainly would have them up all year-round, and they would be in place and able to afford us information year-round. Thank you.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

Thank you. I'll go to the Member from the Deh Cho.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Sheryl Yakeleya

Sheryl Yakeleya Deh Cho

Nothing further. Thank you.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

Next on my list, again, I'll go back to the Member from Frame Lake.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Julian Morse

Julian Morse Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I'm just wondering if the Minister's had a chance to pull up answers to the questions I was asking about the marina anchoring system.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Caitlin Cleveland

Caitlin Cleveland Kam Lake

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So the cost of the slips are $632.52 for each season. This includes taxes. And unfortunately, I cannot provide the Member with kind of the break-even point on that one at this point but would be happy to follow up with the Member further in writing. Thank you.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

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

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Julian Morse

Julian Morse Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess what I'm looking for is would the Minister commit to converting this facility to a cost-recovery facility going forward?

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

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

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Caitlin Cleveland

Caitlin Cleveland Kam Lake

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I'm certainly willing to provide the information to the Member and provide the information of what that might look like and examine the options that we have at our fingertips in order to see what the future holds for this slip. Thank you.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

Okay, thank you. I'm going to go to the Member for Frame Lake.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Julian Morse

Julian Morse Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So noting that as it stands, this is an asset management item and the substantiation that the Minister shared with us, I mean, I'm taking it that even if we do convert it to cost recovery, we would need this budget item to move forward for them to be able to carry out the work because I assume they'd need to kind of come up with some kind of model to sort of generate funds to be able to call it cost recovery. So can the Minister sort of explain how that might work -- yeah, so we can understand how it works in the budget.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

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

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Caitlin Cleveland

Caitlin Cleveland Kam Lake

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I would like to pass to the deputy minister for first crack at that one. Thank you.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

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

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Pamela Strand

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So our costs right now are embedded within our O and M budget. For example, the parks contracts that we give, right now our current parks contractor manages that marina, and the maintenance staff open it every spring and put it to bed in the fall. And so those O and M costs -- I mean, surely, we will get the costs for what it costs to manage but you're right, you know, this is a big project for us. Generally, we don't have these type of line items in the department. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

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

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Julian Morse

Julian Morse Frame Lake

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. I mean, yeah, I mean, my comments stand that I think facilities like this, you know, need to be -- I think we need to be thinking in a time when the government is having so much difficulty paying its bills, looking at facilities like this and targeting them for becoming cost recovery if we can. But at this time, I mean, we're looking at an item of asset management too and once we have an asset, we do need to maintain it. So I am in support of keeping this in here but would like the department to get that information to us and discuss how we can -- how we can recover our costs for providing facilities like this. Thank you. I have no more questions on these items for now, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

Thank you. Is there any questions from Members? Seeing none.

The Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, tourism and parks, infrastructure investments, $2,978,000. Does the committee agree? Mr. Morse -- sorry, I will go to the Member from Frame Lake.

Committee Motion 49-20(1): Tabled Document 193-20(1): 2025-2026 Capital Estimates - Industry, Tourism and Investment - Tourism and Parks - Reduce Infrastructure Investments, Defeated
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Julian Morse

Julian Morse Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I move that the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment -- sorry, just reading this motion here.

The Industry, Tourism and Investment, tourism and parks, operations expenditure summary, 2025-2026 Capital Estimates, be reduced by $865,000. And I can give some more substantiation for that motion in a second. Thank you.

Committee Motion 49-20(1): Tabled Document 193-20(1): 2025-2026 Capital Estimates - Industry, Tourism and Investment - Tourism and Parks - Reduce Infrastructure Investments, Defeated
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

Thank you. Thank you. The Member from Frame Lake has put a motion forward to reduce the budget by $865,000. The motion's in order. To the motion. I'm going to go to the Member from Frame Lake.

Committee Motion 49-20(1): Tabled Document 193-20(1): 2025-2026 Capital Estimates - Industry, Tourism and Investment - Tourism and Parks - Reduce Infrastructure Investments, Defeated
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Julian Morse

Julian Morse Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To give Members some substantiation for what I'm looking to do here, I'll just give my substantiation for each individual project I'm looking to remove from the budget.

First is the Fort Simpson gatehouse residence. In the substantiation, they note -- you know, as the Minister shared with us, this is a site where the current park operator maintains a presence using an RV and this one, I just feel like adding new infrastructure to our parks right now, in a time when we are trying to conserve costs, is just not justifiable. I think that the way the park is being managed right now is reasonable, and so I would like to remove that line item.

The next one is the Blackstone Park fixed roof structure. The bottom line here is I don't believe this additional structure is a need-to-have and would prefer that this kind of money be going towards housing maintenance or construction. So I am suggesting that we cut that one knowing that we are not recovering or costs from these facilities. We can't keep adding to the number of facilities that we have to build and maintain.

The third item -- line item that I'm looking to remove with this motion is the Cameron Crossing Park. With this one, I simply don't agree with the substantiation for the park and, again, note that the cost of building and maintaining these facilities is growing and the more that we continue to grow these costs for construction, for maintenance, the more money that we have to pour into O and M, this is the slow growth, the death by a thousand cuts, that is preventing us from being able to afford to run the territory. And so I think we need to scrutinize these projects carefully and we have to look at what we can and can't build. I see this one, again, it's a project that would be a nice-to-have, but we are not in a government right now that is able to be looking at nice-to-haves. And so I'm very happy with the parks infrastructure that we have. I enjoy it myself almost every year. I've been to many of the parks in the NWT and absolutely love them, but I just don't think that we are in a time right now where we should be growing our parks infrastructure. So with that, Mr. Speaker -- or sorry, Mr. Chair, I have brought forward a couple of cuts where I'm looking at items where we're building new. Anything related to asset management I support, and I think we do need to be maintaining the assets that we've got, but when we're talking about questions about growing our assets, that's a different conversation. And I think -- you know, I've been very clear in some of my statements that I want to be focusing on our priorities. Our priorities include housing. And it would be my intention that this money be put, if possible, by Cabinet into Housing NWT's capital budget. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Committee Motion 49-20(1): Tabled Document 193-20(1): 2025-2026 Capital Estimates - Industry, Tourism and Investment - Tourism and Parks - Reduce Infrastructure Investments, Defeated
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

The Chair

The Chair Richard Edjericon

Thank you. Members, you could speak to the motion. Is there anybody else that wants to speak to the motion? I'm going to go to the Member from Yellowknife North.

Committee Motion 49-20(1): Tabled Document 193-20(1): 2025-2026 Capital Estimates - Industry, Tourism and Investment - Tourism and Parks - Reduce Infrastructure Investments, Defeated
Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 30th

Shauna Morgan

Shauna Morgan Yellowknife North

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I want to echo many of the points raised by my colleague from Frame Lake. I also am concerned with our fiscal situation and concerned with us continuing to build new infrastructure that is neither meeting basic needs, nor delivering us back enough revenue to cover the costs of building and maintaining and operating it. And in particular, when I was looking at the proposal for the new Cameron River Crossing Territorial Park, first I want to say I do appreciate that we have staff that are trying to think creatively and think outside the box of new ideas and ways that we can serve residents; I really do appreciate that. In this particular case, I'm not convinced that there is a significant market that is currently being unserved by our current options. I didn't hear any evidence that there was some kind of survey or like sort of, you know, scientific evidence or data that was collected on need. And certainly, I spend a lot of time out camping in tents off of the Ingraham Trail and many of those paddling routes that are in that area that were mentioned, and it was mentioned that this could be sort of an overnight stopover, and I've -- I've never found the need, and no one I know who does similar things, has ever felt the need to tent in a roadside established campground before heading out on the back country route that your destination is. So what we're looking at is $365,000 just initially, and that doesn't even cover the cost of actually building the campsites or the outhouse, so we don't even know what that additional cost would be in future years. And so I just don't think it's a good idea to proceed with this idea -- with this project. Instead, I would suggest what I have heard a lot, from both residents, constituents, and people who frequent camping spots and cabin spots along the Ingraham Trail, is where we do have a dire need for improved infrastructure is out at Tibbitt. And that's just in the sense of needing more garbage cans and toilets. So it's an extremely well-used area. It's a jumping off point to many other canoe routes, cabin routes, and we don't even have, you know, garbage cans and toilets and so people end up just leaving, you know, refuse all over the place. And so to me, I think we need to start with just looking at our existing needs and just stick with the basics. So that's where I would, you know, direct us to look to first before we start thinking of brand-new projects as complex as a new campground. So with that, I'm prepared to support the motion of my colleague. Thank you, Mr. Chair.