Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That's good news. I'd like to ask the Minister if she'll join my mission to MARS and get online map staking done by 2026 or earlier? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I was reminded to slow down so my apologies to the interpreters.

Getting the MARS system and going on a journey to MARS with the Member is definitely a priority, and I look forward to continuing to find out if there are solutions to getting this done quicker. But I am also looking to make sure that it is done properly. Thank you.

Final supplementary. Member from Range Lake.

Thank you. And thank you to the Minister. Very good answers today, all positive; I like that.

Mr. Speaker, finally, we have an infrastructure deficit. Mines need clean energy. We can't get it to them. What's the Minister's plan? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member. This is a huge topic that is right across industry, and one of the things that we hear is one of the biggest barriers when doing business and securing investment in our territory is our infrastructure deficit. That being said, it is still an opportunity for us to be able to work together on this side of the table and, luckily, myself and the Minister of Infrastructure have a very good working relationship and both share goals of economic prosperity for the territory. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of ITI. Oral questions. Member from Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to my colleagues. I've realized I've been too serious these days, so this is a little bit of fun for everyone.

The Minister of Justice released the daylight savings What We Heard report in 2023, early 2023, Mr. Speaker. We're sitting here a year later. So will the current Minister of Justice commit to moving the territory to permanent time in the life of the 20th Assembly? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member from Great Slave. Minister of Justice.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No one would like that more than me. I was really pushing for this in the last government. Unfortunately I can't make that commitment. There's a variety of reasons. It is unfortunately a much more labour intensive and much more complicated task than people might expect. There is not one entity that you go to and say, I want to get off daylight savings time; I want to stick with a permanent time. We have to reach out to, you know, Microsoft, Apple, Google, a number of these different companies. So maybe I can leave it at that. The Member might have more questions; I don't want to spoil all the fun at once. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I sure hope we can have fun for the next three and a half years.

Mr. Speaker, I understand it's technically a difficult ask. I understand that the Yukon had a bit of a difficult job implementing as well. So what I guess I would ask the Minister today is if he can't commit to full implementation happening in the 20th, can he at least look into what steps need to happen to get us there, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And the Member referenced the Yukon and, of course, the Yukon got rid of the time change a couple years ago. They intended to piggyback off British Columbia who announced that they were going to do the same. It turns out that they didn't go through with it but the Yukon had already committed themselves and so they had to go through it, and it showed the difficulties of a small jurisdiction in making that a reality. And so some of the things that I heard -- and they actually released a report that's quite interesting, you know, you had staff from the Yukon government on the phone with, you know, the 1-800 customer service number to companies like Microsoft trying to make this happen. So unless we have a big jurisdiction who is sort of leading the way and getting the attention of these companies, it is quite difficult and quite resource intensive. You know, I've been preaching about living within our means and ensuring that we are at least providing the basics before we do anything else. So the thing that needs to happen is Alberta needs to get on board. I know that they had a referendum and there wasn't clear support for getting rid of time change unlike here where I think it was 80 some percent, the biggest survey response in the history of the territory. But hopefully that happens. There has been some work done already to see what we would need to do, a number of technical changes. We've been engaging with officials from the Yukon to learn about the steps they had to take. So a lot of that work has already happened. I can share some information with the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that. So what I'm hearing is some work has occurred and he's willing to share that work with Members. That's fantastic. Can that work that is scoped include timelines from when Alberta drops the gauntlet to what it would look like here and in terms of how long it would take us to catch up with Alberta? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That might be a bit much. I'm not quite sure that we can provide that level of detail. We don't quite know what it would take. We would likely piggyback with Alberta and, you know, make the changes at the same time. So while Alberta is contacting the airlines saying that they're getting rid of their time change, we could be part of those conversations. That would be my hope. So I'll see what we can -- what information we can put together, but I don't think it's going to be the level of detail to perhaps satisfy the Member. Thank you.

Final supplementary. Member from Great Slave.

Mr. Speaker, I thought today was supposed to be fun. I can recognize that I might be coming across requesting a level of detail. I just want to have a general picture, Mr. Speaker, of how long implementation may occur in maybe months or years, Mr. Speaker; is that a possibility? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have some reports, I have a briefing note, so we can put together the information from what we have and share it with the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of Justice. Oral questions. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.

Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm able to say that as of December 31st, 2023, we had 517 vacancies across the total GNWT. So that's approximately 8.6 or so of all of the funded positions, which is a total of just over 6,000. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is a variety of different tracking mechanisms that are underway. Every department is responsible to manage all of their internal positions. Finance, through the human resources division, then elects and collates that information. Mr. Speaker, I would commend our annual public service report. It doesn't put vacancies in there, but it does put a fair bit of information that shows the ascensions, so the different hiring of employees, retention rates, retirement rates, and certainly does give a good sense of what some of the movements are, and it does that actually broken down by the different departments so you can start to see areas where there are some divisions that are seeing higher turnovers versus others. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, I don't have it done by a financial number. Again, certainly, if there's -- we do track, as I've said, as of December of last year there was 517. You certainly could go in and take all of those and figure out what each one is worth. What I can say is that late in the end of the last Assembly and also the beginning of this one, I certainly have asked the Department of Finance to go and figure out and ensure, rather, that we are looking at positions that have been vacant for a long time. There can be times where an individual may be off with a duty to accommodate and out on education. You know, there's maternity and parental leaves. So there's a number of different reasons a position may be formally vacant in this system but the individual or the position has somebody coming back to it or that maybe have competitions that are ongoing. But we do want to make sure we're monitoring positions that are vacant for a long time where there's not an open competition, and those ones should be then removed from the system. That work has begun and will certainly continue. Thank you.