Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have more questions for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

Can the Minister tell me when the GNWT sets securities, does that process take into account the wide spectrum of future possibilities from bankruptcy to planned closure? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Member for the question. The answer is certainly, yes. As the regulatory process proceedings roll along, the department provides a number of estimates, you know, whether it's regarding a regular closure and what that remediation process looks like. So I'll give a couple of examples. We would offer, you know, advice on water management, fuel and equipment, mobilizing and demobilizing in the event of a regular kind of process of shutdown. We also provide estimates in the instance of the worst case scenario where a business was to go bankrupt. And, you know, those security estimates take various things into consideration. You know, it assumes that the third party contractor will have additional costs because they'll have to be brought into site. It assumes that the fuel on site would potentially not be salvageable so that cost is calculated in as an example. And it also assume that crews and equipment, in order to do that work, would need to be mobilized to site. That's an example of some of the work that we do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister explain what happens if and when a resource development company goes bankrupt and the GNWT is left with the bill? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that's a question that really has a number of possible directions as to how it could be answered. Certainly, you know, at the end of the day we have securities that are set through the process which we hold as a government to ensure that we have resources to do that cleanup at the end of the day. Having said that, you know, we have processes here where we may come for supplemental appropriations if that was to exceed the budget that was available. But we would also look at other possible ways to ensure that that work is done in the most economical way to ensure that we're staying within the commitments that are made and realizing that part of that process is really ensuring we have a balance of securities held overall to ensure that we're able to do the work at the end of the day but we're also, you know, considering that there are instances where things may not go as planned. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of ECC. Oral questions. Member from Frame Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the previous Minister of Infrastructure committed to establishing a building standards framework or Act which addresses accessibility concerns repeatedly raised by the human rights commission. Mr. Speaker, does the current Minister of Infrastructure have an update on the initiative to create a building standards framework or Act? Thank you.

Thank you. Member from Frame Lake. Minister of Infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yeah, I'm aware of this, and there is a commitment to continue this process; however, obviously, with priorities of the government, things do change and do slow down different lines of work however we know that there's a need for this, and we'll continue to work on it. The Department of Infrastructure, municipal and community affairs, department of housing have been reviewing all the existing regulations, and we're hopefully going to advance some of this here in 2026. And, yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that was a fairly non-committal answer. Hopefully advanced -- I would like to get a bit more concrete from the Minister. This is certainly one that's important to me and repeatedly raised by the human rights commission. Would the Minister be able to offer a commitment that we're going to advance work on this and perhaps have a legislative proposal in 2027? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's always nice to try to commit but we all know how we work here in the government, and we get sidetracked with doing other lines of work and our priorities on legislative proposals change. And yeah, so, I mean, at the end of the day, the policies, the legislative work, and all the background's being worked on. Obviously, I should be clear; it's not a current priority but there is work being done to try to move this along as we know that this is an appetite for many Members of this government. So, again, the commitment is to continue to work on this and move it along to try to get this out. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Infrastructure. Final supplementary. Member from Frame Lake.

No, thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Member Yellowknife Centre. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is -- one of the things we are working on right now is actually to have an improvement to our vendor complaint process. The process that we have right now is a review process, and anyone that goes through a procurement and is unsuccessful at the end of that procurement can go through the review process, and it would be explained to them where they may have been unsuccessful or why they may have been unsuccessful, and procurement shared services can work with potential proponents so that they can improve bids going forward.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to what is obviously a very specific circumstance that is being referenced here, housing does take on most of its own procurement when it services but for large contracts, they do have the benefit of working with procurement shared services, which they did in this case. And in this case, they also had a fairness advisor involved from the very beginning because it is a large procurement. So in this particular instance, again, I won't speak much more into the details of it, but I will assure the public that a fairness advisor was involved throughout the process and that there is one of the -- at least one of the disqualified parties is going through the review to understand the decisions that were made. Thank you.

So, Mr. Speaker, it seems clear there is no appeal period. There's a 'let's complain and whine period', but there's no appeal period. So, Mr. Speaker, if there's an error in the review process, the bidder, this unsuccessful bidder, is the one that ultimately gets punished. So how can we fix that, that their bid has an appeal period that's actually an appeal period where it gets reviewed with the eye that maybe an error was made and considered in the fulsome ability that it was worthy to submit and have the chance? And if it's still found wanting, that's okay too, Mr. Speaker. Where is that chance? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if a fairness advisor, for example, were to identify that there was any irregularity or concern raised, a procurement can be paused and a procurement certainly can be -- we can make a decision not to continue. At the same time, Mr. Speaker, we certainly want to ensure that fundamentally that the reputation of the government to follow through with procurements when they've put out is maintained and that they continue to do so in a transparent fashion. So there are quite a number of rules that are associated to conducting a procurement and to conducting a public procurement in particular. I can say that there certainly has been work over the last few years in terms of improving that process, starting with the procurement review of the last government, and bringing forward a number of changes, not the least of which is to our vendor engagement systems, vendor performance management on the side of the government, and vendor inquiry processes on the other side. And we're going to continue to refine that process but in the meantime, Mr. Speaker, that is why there's a review so that vendors do have an opportunity to raise a concern if there is one and the government would have an opportunity to determine whether or not the concern is one that warrants interference with the procurement, the otherwise transparent and public procurement process. Thank you.

Correction, that was the Minister of Finance, not the infrastructure Minister. I apologize. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, would the Minister be very clear to this House that there is no appeal period; it's simply a whine, complain, and lick your wounds process? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, public procurement processes are one that the government takes very seriously. It is very important to ensure that when an RFP goes out that it is adhered to, it is put out publicly. The very nature of the process is that there will be a successful bidder and there will be not successful bidders. And what we do at that point, Mr. Speaker, is to ensure, again, as I've said, that we throughout the process are monitoring what's going on internally, that when there's a large procurement, there's a fairness advisor from outside of the government to monitor that process, and if there are concerns raised that suggest that the underpinnings of the process are not adhering to the standards that we expect of them, then we certainly can look at whether or not to cancel a procurement or pause a procurement. But, Mr. Speaker, when there's an unsuccessful bidder, they can participate in the review process to understand why they were unsuccessful. The fact that someone's unsuccessful does not necessarily mean that the process was not adhered to or that the process was unfair. Notwithstanding the specific circumstances, but because we believe in good process, we are going to continue to improve that process and make the ability of vendors to come forward in different means better. That review process right now is one that continues to feed in so that going forward public procurement adheres to the highest standards. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Finance. Oral questions. Member from Range Lake.