Thank you. Committee, we'll proceed with the first item but before we do that, we'll take a short recess. 20 minutes.

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Ready to go. We got quorum. Order. Mr. Hawkins. Order. Learning from her, former -- okay, thank you.

I now call Committee of the Whole to order. Before proceedings begin today, I will ask that everybody please make an effort to slow down when speaking for the benefit of our interpreters.

Committee has agreed to resume consideration of Tabled Document 29-20(1), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 4, 2023-2024. Would the Minister like to bring witnesses into the chambers?

Sergeant-at-arms, please escort the witnesses -- oh, sorry. Does the committee agree?

Thank you. Sergeant-at-arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.

For the record, I'd like to get the Minister to please introduce your witnesses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, back again beside me on my left is deputy minister Bill MacKay, and on my right deputy secretary to the financial management board Mr. Terence Courtoreille.

Thank you. Committee, we will resume where we left off yesterday with consideration of the Department of Environment and Climate Change on page 4. I would like to remind Members that we will go through the estimates by activity. Please keep your questions to the activity under consideration.

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 4, 2023-2024, Department of Environment and Climate Change, environmental management monitoring and climate change not previously authorized, $939,000. Is there any questions? Member from YK Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, of course, before I begin my questions, I'll note that being first in the cue and then the power goes out, and I won't say that's suspicious or incidental. Ah, the government will do anything to deny questions, so.

But no, on a serious note, Mr. Chairman, under this section we have water surveillance and we have climate change preparedness. And I'm wondering if the Minister can flesh out both of those two categories as in what the public would see and how they'd be reported for -- and that's specifically more for the wastewater surveillance. The second piece being, of course, the climate change preparedness, what would the public actually see in this activity? Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, we are -- in an effort to actually answer questions, I'm not clear we were asking what in the wastewater surveillance and what in the second item go public facing? Like, as in what the programs and services are? Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from YK Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have two-line activities. One says wastewater surveillance. So what does the public actually see and know about this, and how does it get reported? It's -- these are powerful words but they're kind of generic. So, you know, somebody would say well, what does that mean and how is it reported? So what information do they gather, where do we find out about what these mean? And setting aside it's federal money, which is nil, in other words nil to the cost to the Northwest Territories, people are often curious of these types of things as just generic headings. So thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to Minister Wawzonek.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So there's two positions under the wastewater surveillance funding. This was -- is an interdepartmental initiative, so it involves work across multiple departments. The first of the positions funded through these dollars is an environment laboratory technologist which is responsible for doing a daily analysis of wastewater samples. The second is a molecular microbiologist. This is an individual who can support and liaise with the Office of the Chief Public Health Officer and with Taiga lab, and that responsibility is to develop and refine protocols that can help detect virus in wastewaters. This, you might recall, started during COVID-19 when there was a realization that this was an avenue by which viruses can be detected in wastewater. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from YK Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With respect to the two positions, are they currently staffed? Thank you.

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

Yes. Thank you.

Member of YK Centre.

I may not have heard the answer because I was writing my next question down. So -- in fairness. So the climate change preparedness for the North, is there any type of public reporting of this particular initiative? Thank you.

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

YK Centre Member.

Any chance they could provide it to the Members? Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to Minister Wawzonek.