Thank you, Premier. Oral questions. Member from the Sahtu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further to my statement on holdover fires aka zombie fires, my first question to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, in preparation for the upcoming 2024 summer fire season what is the Department of ECC doing to assess holdover fires in our territory? Thank you.

Thank you, Member from the Sahtu. Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you, Member, for the question. I would say climate change and the extended drought that we've had over the last couple of years has certainly shown us the need to be proactive in how we're approaching these types of fires over the winters, and I think one of the things that we're doing is we're monitoring. We've got staff currently monitoring fires throughout the winter. And as the fall came and last fire season ended late in October, staff identified that these are potential challenges for the early spring. So the department has worked to plan to bring our staff and resources on earlier in the spring to ensure that we're prepared and ready to address any of the existing fires that were held over over the winter. There's a plan to do aerial as well as drone scanning early in the spring as well as having staff on the ground also doing assessments on fires. Currently, as they're monitoring over the winter, there has been some action on a fire at Paradise Gardens outside of Hay River because there was significant smoke that was bellowing from there that was bothering some of the residents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for that response.

Moving on to my next question, I'm glad to see that there is a monitoring assessment and an inventory of these holdover fires in the different locations across the territory. In particular, I've heard remarks made to me on several sites along the winter road south of Tulita, so if the Minister could put that on the radar for assessment.

My next question is is there communications underway with each community on the assessment and inventory catalog to the holdover fires close to the communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, annually the department regional wildfire management staff teams undertake community engagement every winter as part of an annual process. They meet with all the community governments, Indigenous governments, Indigenous leaders, and community members, provide them with information regarding wildfire response. And then also the community members are given an opportunity to bring forward their concerns from the past fire season, more concerns or thoughts they have on the upcoming fire season, and there's a public forum which gives them an opportunity to address those issues. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the emergency response plans are the responsibility of the community governments, and they're the ones that are responsible to prepare, adopt, and maintain the emergency plans and programs, including reviewing their emergency response plans annually. Environment and climate change is indirectly involved with these plans as they move forward or as they come into implementation in that we provide, you know, support and information to those activities. Over the winter, I know MACA will be delivering community emergency planning workshops to assist community governments in developing, updating their community emergency plans. MACA's also been delivering tabletop exercise workshops for community governments who want to validate their emergency plan and increase preparedness through practice. MACA has also had a wide variety of tools and supports for community governments for their emergency management role to add and build to capacity, including community emergency plan templates, an EMO portal for community governments to assess tools and templates to assist with community emergency management programs, a community emergency management video series to educate community emergency management officials on basic emergency management in the NWT emergency management system, and programming to be involved in the incident command system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from the Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Indigenous representation report from the 19th Assembly was expected to increase Aboriginal hiring in the public services. I raise two issues here today on P1 positions. Mr. Speaker, in the 20th Assembly I heard from the Premier, Minister, that they were -- they want to work collaboratively and to build trust with Indigenous governments. My question to the Premier -- and I want to apologize for not getting these questions to you a little bit earlier. And I just want to say that can the Premier provide an update to the House about what action the 20th Assembly's taken to increase Indigenous hiring and to help restore the broken trust with Indigenous governments? Mahsi.

Thank you, Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. There's two questions there. Mr. Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I'll do my best of course. The Minister of Finance isn't here today, and so I know that questions directed to other -- it would normally go to other Ministers than come to the Premier when the appropriate Minister is not here. Just a bit of education to the public on why I'm answering these. So I'll do my best. It's a big question because there actually is a lot happening. This was a huge focus in the last government as the Member recalls, and so a lot of work has begun. So I can't go through everything that is happening but if you look at the Indigenous Recruitment and Retention Framework and Action Plan, that is the plan that is going to lead us through the next few years. There's a number of actions in there but overall the priorities are creating a culturally inclusive workplace, building capacity and career development, and fostering Indigenous leadership through talent management. So, basically, we want to create an environment where Indigenous people want to work for one thing. We need to figure out what are the barriers to Indigenous people for working in the GNWT, and that goes to things like reviewing the job actions. So every department now has a plan to -- job description -- sorry. Every department has a plan to review a certain number of job descriptions each year until they completely review those to ensure there are no barriers in those. There's exit interviews. So when employees leave, if there were issues, if there were -- they felt like there was issues of discrimination or systemic racism, those can be brought to the forefront and addressed. We have the Indigenous Career Gateway Program, which -- and I believe this -- it feels like it's getting more and more use. We have an Indigenous eligibility list for pre-qualified candidates. And I could go on and on and on but I'll wrap it up there, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you, Premier, for helping answer that question. My next question would be is that will the GNWT commit to revisiting the decisions that have impacted my constituents who were wrongfully dismissed from their jobs and replaced with non-Indigenous staff? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So if the Member wants to provide the Minister of Finance with some specifics about the instances he's talking about, I'm sure the Minister of Finance will be happy to look into those. Thank you.

Oral questions. Member from the Deh Cho.

Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of ECC. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister of Environment and Climate Change explain how his department is responding to the historic low water levels in the Mackenzie River that we seen over the last year? Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question. The department's role related to low water levels is essentially providing situational awareness of the current conditions in the Northwest Territories. Our hydrologists regularly review real time data that is provided through a number of mechanisms. This information will tell us the current water level and the flow rates, and this information is provided through monthly bulletins about the current water conditions. This information then can be used by departments or EMO during the freshet, by infrastructure particularly during the barging season, and this helps to understand the short and long-term conditions related to low water levels. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister explain if ECC is anticipating low water levels in this year for the Mackenzie River? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, while ECC is unable to predict how much rain or snow there will be other the next several months, it's safe to say that we would require an extremely high rainfall amount across the large geographic area to increase our water levels at this point. The winter snowfall amounts across the NWT have been extremely variable, and these very low snowfall amounts in Fort Simpson and -- sorry, ECC will continue to assess water conditions and distribute monthly NWT water monitoring bulletins to the public. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, and thank you to the Minister for that. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us what communications ECC has had with the Alberta government regarding the drought command team that they just recently initiated? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week, I met with the Alberta Minister of Environment and Parks, Rebecca Schulz. We discussed issues of shared concern, including low water levels. We discussed the concern that had been raised by the NWT Indigenous governments, partners, and residents about our low water levels. We also discussed the water shortage advisory that is currently in place for the Hay River basin in Alberta along with many other water sheds in the province. Water use by temporary and long-term license holders has been affected. Through our transboundary water agreement with Alberta, there's a commitment to continue to transparently communicate about water use during these times of low water levels. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Minister of Environment and Climate Change. Final supplementary. Member from the Deh Cho.

Thank you. And thank you to the Minister. Mr. Speaker, the Government of Alberta has begun telling the residents to conserve water and that they've launched water sharing negotiations with all of their water licensing holders. Can the Minister tell us if the NWT is in a similar boat and our residents will need to begin conserving water usage like Alberta? Thank you.