Thank you, Minister of Infrastructure. Final supplementary. Member from Mackenzie Delta.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Are there any indicators from recent activities, or lack of activities, where you feel the government should take back the responsibility of the infrastructure throughout the NWT? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a lot of the -- in fact, I would venture to say most -- the vast majority of our roads are maintained by contractors, third-party contractors, and not by -- directly by operators in the GNWT's employ. And, Mr. Speaker, yes, we can certainly always look to optimize that we are doing the best we can, so perhaps what I'll do is take that away and just have a direct conversation with the MLA to see whether or not there may be particular stretches, particular contracts, particular areas, that need another look and I'm certainly happy to have that conversation to make sure that we are serving the community. Thank you.

Minister of Infrastructure. Oral questions. Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Range Lake families with adopted children are struggling to get their loved ones the support and care they need once they go -- once they age into adulthood. Their disabilities and circumstances are no fault of their own and yet they are not being supported by the system. Does the Minister of Health and Social Services agree that families with adopted adult children have a right to the care they need regardless of their ability? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Member from Range Lake. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm not going to specifically categorize but I think all residents, you know, have a right to the care that they need. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, knowing that, can the Minister explain why there's not a suite of services available to adult children -- or to children in social services who age into adulthood? There's no Pathfinders. There's -- it's very difficult to get information. I have constituents struggling to find answers. And when they're given, they're sent back to square one. So can the Minister find a way to make this process better and indicate if she'll make that commitment on the floor of the House? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, Mr. Speaker, within our child and family services we have extended services to the -- before I think it used to be to 18 and now it's expanded to 24. My understanding within the system, these supports are supposed to be there to assist. However, this -- like, you know, coming from the Member, this is -- I've never -- I haven't had this come up through my office before so I'm willing to work with the Member to deal with, if there's a certain specific case or a family that's not getting the services that they require, I would work with the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will confirm with the Minister, because we have raised this with her office, but I -- we'll get to the bottom of that. But, Mr. Speaker, there is a paid -- a very successful paid pilot -- or paid community caregiver pilot project in the past, but it was discontinued due to lack of funds. This is a crucial support for these adult children in this situation. Can the Minister commit to bringing it back, or at least exploring the project to see if it could be brought back, within the next fiscal year? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is another area within NTHSSA that is unfunded. It was a -- it was a pilot but it was unfunded so it added to the deficit. And so what was done with this project after review that the services could be, you know, done from within. But what I can do to commit to the Member is to going back to that information that I received and be able to respond to the Member later. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Final supplementary. Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Finally, all social services has to offer support for adult children in this situation is through employment. We have excellent NGOs doing work like the disabilities council of Inclusion NWT, but you need to be employed to get the benefit. So what is the Minister -- what does the department do for adult children in the system, in care, that cannot find employment; how are they supported? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can't speak to the details of this case so I will look forward to having a further conversation with the Member and with staff within my department. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Frame Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, what is being done to address the issue of micromanagement and burdensome approvals processes in the public service? This question is for the Minister of the public service. Thank you.

Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would be more than happy to encourage every public servant to take the opportunity to use, whether it's the red tape reduction working group firstly, which [email protected] -- always happy to get that in when I can. But to submit if there's a specific process that is burdensome. Obviously it's the frontline workers who know that best. If they're running into a process, running into a program, running into something internally or even outward facing that is red tape-esq, then raising it specifically to the attention of this group is really quite important.

There's -- you know, beyond that, Mr. Speaker, there's certainly a number of management courses, too, from the perspective of ensuring that managers are not micromanaging. There's a lot of management courses out there. We are rolling out new training in this area and can certainly go back and ensure that this is one of the modules that we have in there, is that we want to empower the public service and not micromanage them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And the Minister led perfectly into my next question which was going to ask, Mr. Speaker, what are we doing to empower staff in the public service to contribute meaningfully to decision-making? So it sounds like we're on the right track, and I'd be curious to hear from the Minister what we're doing in that regard. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I do want to give another shout out, as I have on more than one occasion, that when we first put out the Restoring Balance initiative, we went to the public service and the public service responded. We had over 900 public servants respond directly with over 1800 suggestions, many of which were directly involved in the planning of how to develop and build up the main estimates within that context, a number of decisions -- or suggestions around efficiencies, department amalgamations, even fleet management came up in the course of there. So those processes and those kind of linkages shouldn't have to wait for a special initiative. It certainly would be my hope that public servants see the pathways to put those ideas forward. But, again, you know, there are opportunities, whether it's through the red tape, whether it's through town halls that I conduct periodically to put ideas like that forward, and hopefully people continue to see that. But, again, we also do need to take, you know, some responsibility within our management. Every manager should be encouraging that from their direct reports and so on and so forth up the chain so that there's always that continuous opportunity for learning as an organization. So, again, happy to ensure that when we do our development training that we are emphasizing that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I certainly like what I'm hearing from the Minister today. This is exactly the kind of thing I hope to see. I mean, it's -- it's not lost on me that despite what the Minister is saying, I'm still hearing from people, you know, about these issues so we've got work to do in some areas. I know that there's a difference between different departments and different teams, but it's an issue that I want us to be focusing on.

Mr. Speaker, a lot of what we're talking about here is the concept of flattening hierarchy in the system. I'm wondering if that's a concept the Minister's familiar with and is something that she's looking at as the Minister for the public service, what we can do within the public service to flatten out our hierarchies, empower staff, create better efficiency in the public service, and empower our staff. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have to acknowledge I have become a bit of a generalist in this job, not an expert. So I'm not going to purport to be an expert in flattening hierarchies. I certainly will commit to take that back to the Department of Finance. We -- you know, things have come up here over this last session,b looking at Indigenous hiring, looking at empowering public servants, and looking at morale. And so I've already asked that the department and I sit down and take all those under consideration as soon as session's over. I'm going to add flattening hierarchy to that list. Thank you.

Minister of Finance. Final supplementary. Oral questions. Member from Monfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this question is for Minister of Justice, and it's a continuation of the addiction first responder.

Mr. Speaker, we know that illicit drugs are now outpacing alcohol as a source of society's miseries. I know that some people say drug abuse is simply a personal choice. Well, that's not the case in -- that's not the case in many of the small communities where drug dealers are giving drugs to youth and even children who are tempted and treat it like a candy, you know. Our youth are vulnerable and victimized. We need to do more for them. Our young people are dying. So I just want to ask the Minister regarding this that how many overdose related calls did the RCMP respond to in the territory in the last year? Thank you.