Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, and it's -- you know, I find that question -- it was just a couple of weeks ago that I was having this conversation because renewal is up this year for health care cards. And on our health care cards, they are very plain. They have an expiry date and they have our name. And so that was the question that I asked my staff, to go back to the department to say how do we work with infrastructure? You know, we have this struggle right now in our communities where a lot of people are looking for identification cards. How do we work together to provide identification cards, have that information, the picture so it's the right person with the card so that, I've just tasked my staff to kind of look at options on where we are with all that kind of information and is that something that we can do and what is that cost going to cost us. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife Centre.

Well, it's funny because I get -- what's the right phrase -- I don't want to say targeted, but I get target -- I'll say it anyway. I get targeted for not giving my questions to the Minister or advancing this up, but yet she scooped my last question. So good on her for being on her toes, Mr. Speaker, instead of heels.

Mr. Speaker, that said, I just want to reaffirm, with the contract coming up, will she ensure that Members are involved in some type of early discussion and will she commit to this contract we are going to do health care card business differently and more improved? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just to clarify, I think it's the renewals that are up right now for Northwest Territories residents to make sure that they're applying within a couple of months of their health care card. I'd have to look into how or who is the procurement of how we do our health care cards. But that is all kind of the questions that I have just started to have because I think it's important that if we're doing this in the Northwest Territories, then we need to be making sure that those cards, everybody in our territory has one. Maybe having their picture on it, maybe it being their personal identification for flying, all that type of stuff, it would be a good thing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Infrastructure.

So the Office of the Auditor General in its audit of the Stanton P3 project recommended the GNWT publicly report costs related to the Legacy Hospital Building leasing arrangement and to provide updates to total project costs when there are significant changes over the 30-year term. Now, the GNWT has disagreed and declined to publicly report those costs.

Can the Minister explain who or what the government is protecting by refusing to publicly report these costs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Minister of Finance -- or Infrastructure.

Either way, Mr. Speaker, on this one, thank you for the question. Mr. Speaker, this report from the auditor general, every single other recommendation the GNWT has accepted. It's singularly around the classification of the Liwego'ati Building as being whether a P3 or not a P3 that we continue to have this issue. If it is a commercial lease, we do not report any of our commercial leases publicly. They are proprietary information to the landlord. Because we have classified this one as a commercial lease, it is proprietary information, it is reported by constituency, by community, as every other commercial lease is. This one is no different. There's no matter of any -- then when people are being protected, Mr. Speaker, it's the same as on every other commercial lease. We don't report them publicly. They are not part of the P3 reporting. They are held separate. But on every other aspect of the audit, we were more than happy to accept the recommendations. And, quite frankly, we're already making the changes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the Minister's claiming this is a case just like any other commercial lease. Does the GNWT hold any other commercial leases where we actually own the building and we've leased it to someone and then subleased it back from them? Is there any other cases of any other building or any other commercial lease that works that way in the territory? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, to my knowledge this is a unique situation. It was also a unique opportunity, Mr. Speaker. It's not one that was -- any Member of this Cabinet was in government at the time. What we had is a building that we owned that needed to be remediated, and we needed to remediate it at significant costs. This is a large building, a medical building, and the remediation would be significant. So that was included as part of the leasing arrangement.

Subsequent to that -- and I think this is where there starts to be some challenges. And subsequent to that, it was identified that we would, in fact, need space for long-term care. And so instead, we -- we already had the cost sharing or the agreement -- revenue sharing agreement in place. With that revenue sharing agreement in place, Mr. Speaker, we were able to go into the Liwego'ati Building, go back to the commercial party, negotiate a lease with them, with our revenue sharing agreement in place we got a better deal as a result of that, and that's the situation we find ourselves in. That's a fairly unique circumstance as compared to any other lease in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of Infrastructure. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the Minister has just claimed that subsequent to the lease, we realized -- or the government realized that it needed more space for health care services but, in fact, it was as early as 2014 that the government had recognized that more space was needed for health care services. Can the Minister explain why that was not taken into account when this lease agreement was first arranged with Ventura? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this, again -- more than happy to say if we want to admit wrongdoing, that looking back ten years ago we don't have all of the records that we should have in order to explain that decision. None of us were here. I wasn't here.

What I can say, Mr. Speaker, to the best of the knowledge today, at the time in 2014, the plan that health and social services was to build a new and standalone long-term care facility, and then when that project would have been ready to move forward closer, if I recall correctly, to the 2019, 2020 -- or rather 2020, the situation had changed, the markets had changed, commercial realities had changed, and costs had gone up significantly for new builds and at that time -- I believe it was at that time that the decision was made to, in fact, reutilize this building where we already a revenue sharing agreement rather than going and building new.

So, Mr. Speaker, if we want to now -- and, again, one of the recommendations was to keep better records. Agreed, and we'll do that going forward. But in this case, that's the history that brought us here. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this question is -- these questions are for the Minister of ECE.

Mr. Speaker, I've been speaking with daycare operators. The wage certification grid that the government has brought out is causing difficulties for operators in a time when we're trying to expand daycare spaces. Mr. Speaker, is this new grid something that's been imposed on us by the federal government, or is it our own program? Thank you.

Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, the Canada-wide agreement with the GNWT solely dictates that we must have a wage grid, but it doesn't say where that wage grid starts and where it ends. That is solely dictated by our pocketbooks. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that clarification. So, Mr. Speaker, daycare operators are telling me that this new system is restrictive and preventing them from hiring staff and helping the department achieve their goal of creating new daycare spaces. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister commit to sit down with these operators and work with them and figure this out, find a solution that works for them, that works for the department, something that can help us move forward? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my last -- I know which early learning and childcare institution the Member is speaking with. My last conversation with the executive director of that institution, I did say any time you want to have a sit down I am more than happy. I can also inform the Member that there's been three separate meetings since last Friday with this particular childcare provider, and I believe there was even one as recently as today, Mr. Speaker. I'm always happy to sit down and have these conversations, but I will also say that we have to ensure that our program falls in line with the federal agreement and while we stipulate the minimum that people need to be paid, providers are more than welcome to exceed that. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary. Member from Frame Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I'm glad the Minister highlighted that because that dovetails well with the question I was about to ask.

Mr. Speaker, operators are telling us that they can't charge fees for additional services like providing healthy meals, extracurricular programming, or even making up the gap between what the government is willing to give and what daycare operators need to be paying in order to keep staff. So, again, is that a rule being imposed on us by the feds or the GNWT, and can we change these things that are creating problems for operators?

Mr. Speaker, I just want to remind the Minister, as she's well aware, we are trying to increase spaces; we want our operators to be given the tools they need to increase spaces to expand. So can the Minister commit to working with them to change the things that need to be changed to solve these problems? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I too would like the same things as the Member. The stipulation of no additional fees being charged is in the Canada-wide agreement and any additional fees that are charged must be deducted by the primary fees that are being charged to the parents. So we are in a situation where we need to figure out how to create sustainability and stability within our own system but ensure that we are, at the end of the day, following that agreement. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to follow up on questions raised by the Member for Yellowknife North on the Stanton renewal project.

The auditor general maintains that the leasing -- the decision to lease the Legacy Building, it's not value for money. Plain English. It's in excess of $70 million that wasn't part of the initial project to a building we own. Does the Minister agree with the auditor general, and can she tell us today that this was not good value for money as a decision? Thank you.