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

Thank you. If the Minister doesn't have the information, there's not much point in me digging further so I'll defer that one, I guess, for now. What? I'm just stating the obvious. Thank you, Madam Chair. That's it for me.

Thank you, Member. No further questions there. Member for Great Slave.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to couch this question very much in the fact that I do not want to speak about bargaining. I understand the bargaining process has to go along its merry little way. But I do want to understand for the Public Service Act LT, how far along is that towards completion? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member for Great Slave. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think it's as far as along as it can be in the context of knowing that we certainly would never want to bargain in bad faith and in a situation of then changing, you know, you don't change the Act when you're in the midst of bargaining. That would not be the appropriate thing to do. So it's as far as it can be in the circumstances and then, yeah, whether it can be advanced further, subject to conclusion of the bargaining process, again I'll have to just go back and see where that's at specifically. But it's certainly front of mind to me to see that it makes -- we make some movement on it this Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of Finance. Member for Great Slave.

Well, I note that the Minister and her department has aimed to see this bill passed during the life of the Assembly and look forward to further updates when the bargaining is complete. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I don't see a question there. Thank you, Member for Great Slave. Member for the Sahtu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There on page 157, the contribution to the NWT Power Corporation, maybe I can ask a little bit more detail on the increase. Is it related to the Taltson hydro repair? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member for the Sahtu. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Madam Chair. No, Madam Chair, it's not. This is very much directly related to the fact that there's been significant challenges. I mean, low water being probably top of mind on this one. It's not a capital -- it's not related to capital. It's not related to the operations, really, of the organization. It was either that there's -- and I don't have the numbers top of mind. But there was a significant amount of diesel that was burned over this last while because of low water and with high fuel costs, we had a pretty unfortunate combination of needing more diesel and high cost of diesel and that has resulted in a situation where if the -- if our government, the GNWT, doesn't step in and provide this funding, then that gets disbursed on to people's power rates, which obviously at this point in time, there's, I think, little capacity for folks to be paying higher and higher power rates. So this is the government basically stepping in to provide this. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of Finance. Member for the Sahtu.

I got nothing further there, Madam Chair.

Thank you. No further questions. Member for Range Lake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's the evacuation travel support program, it's being sunset. Hopefully for good reason. But is the Minister confident that everyone who needs help from this fund has been helped and there are no -- there's nothing in the queue or things that are going to be harmed -- or going to not receive support by the sunsetting of these funds? Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Range Lake. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the last update of data that I have dates back now to February, so I will have to go back and reconfirm. But as of February, there were already well into -- almost 5,000 applicants who had received their funding. There was still at that time, which, again, I acknowledge is several months ago, but there was still at that time about 112 evacuee income disruption applications that were in process or being reviewed, and another 120 or so on the evacuation travel support that were in progress or being reviewed. Often the same households or same applicant in these cases. The reasons for review can be anything from someone not having completed the application form or not having provided a document that may have been requested. Sometimes we had instances of people giving the wrong bank numbers and so funding being, you know, not deposited or not able to be deposited. So that was the first part of the question.

The second part of that question concerning if there was someone who was still in progress at this point and I, again, expect those numbers have gone down. Then would they be subject to not having money? No, Madam Chair, I'm fairly confident that at this point, if there's only a handful left after the many thousands processed, that this could be funded somehow internally and they would still get the funding if it was -- if there is, in fact, someone that still has an outstanding claim. Thank you.

Thank you, finance Minister. Member for Range Lake.

Nothing further. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. No further questions. Please turn to page 157.

Finance, directorate, operations expenditure summary, 2024-2025 Main Estimates, $113,351,000. Does the committee agree?

Thank you. Moving on to human resources beginning on page 160, with information items on page 162. Are there any questions? Member for Great Slave.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, in the department's business plans on page 97 -- I'll give the Minister and staff, to flip to that, a moment -- one of the -- oh, gosh, what are we calling them -- actions under the mandate commitment of engaging the public service to identify opportunities to improve efficiency, coordinate processes, to support long-term fiscal sustainability is the development and implementation of a Employee Satisfaction Action Plan. That includes information gathering and policy initiatives.

So I can see kind of why that was slotted under there. I guess my question to the Minister is, is a more satisfied workforce a more efficient workforce? Thank you, Madam Chair.