Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, within the piece of legislation, it is defined as anything that is over 50 years old.

It is my understanding as well, Mr. Speaker, that if a community can confirm for certain that human remains are of a certain person and have a firm belief that it is clear that this -- the remains are of that person, that the Archaeological Sites Act does not apply in that case.

I think it is also important here, Mr. Speaker, in regards to this conversation, the Member has referenced the oath that we all took as Members where we swore to honour and respect all treaties in the territory. And many of our modern treaties in this territory speak to the remains of their members, and also confirm and compel the government to make sure that we are doing engagement and notification of all Indigenous governments, not just in the Northwest Territories but Nunavut as well, given that children from across the Northwest Territories and Nunavut attended residential schools in multiple different areas and not just their traditional territory. So it's really important that we're able to honour those treaties as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary. Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have an issue here that, you know, we have a mandate letter from the Premier to the Minister. All we got to do is implement that. And why do we have to wait years to bring baby Alma home? My question is the Minister mandate includes implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the TRC Calls to Action, and the MMIWG Calls to Justice. How does interfering with residential school investigations into the death of these children align with those commitments? If the Minister cannot even allow such an investigation to proceed into the death of these children, is there any genuine intent to uphold Indigenous rights during her term? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is something that is incredibly important to me and something that I definitely intend to uphold. Mr. Speaker, within this legislation -- sorry. Can we come back to this question, Mr. Speaker, please. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, following up on my Member's statement regarding the conditions in the Nova Apartment building, I'd like to ask the Minister of housing what housing has been doing and what they plan to do to ensure that the security of the building, first and foremost, has been managed and the conditions are improved. Thank you.

Thank you, Member from Inuvik Boot Lake. Minister responsible for Housing NWT.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Nova Apartments in Inuvik has been an ongoing issue over the last ten years. Both you and I know it, MLA Rodgers. Like, this is really important because these families that are living in these conditions are seeing ongoing violence and trauma every day. And the work that Housing NWT is doing is we're working with the landlord, the private landlord, to improve the conditions within Nova. It's difficult times, difficult conditions. We're see a lot of illegal activity. We're seeing drug busts on an ongoing basis. We're seeing crack being smoked in the hallways, and we're seeing tenants having to live through that. So Housing NWT is on this. They're aware of this. They're having these discussions with the landlord. And these are serious things that we push every day, and I push as Minister. So thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate that. And I know the Minister's well aware of what's happening up there. I know she has very close ties to Inuvik and is very respected in Inuvik.

Would the Minister consider in the short-term, you know, if possible, relocating some of -- at least the families and the elders out of that building until such time as that their work's been completed to get this building to where it needs to be? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have asked the same question to Housing NWT, how can we relocate these families to get them out of Nova, to get them away from that situation. The problem is that we don't have any other units available in Inuvik at this time. We continue to push it. We try to move them out and move them to other locations that are safer within the community. We're looking at different security measures within Nova to beef that up. We are talking to the landlord. But at this time, we do have a lack of available public housing in Inuvik. That's the crux of the problem, Mr. Speaker. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Minister responsible for Housing NWT. Final supplementary. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Hopefully with our spanky new budget and our $50 million, we can get some of these boarded up units in Inuvik ready for some of these families to go in and enjoy life the way they should.

My final question, Mr. Speaker, is that would the department or has the department considered looking at -- and I'm not sure where the landlord is on this -- but, you know, purchasing this building, taking 100 percent ownership of this building, taking 100 percent responsibility to get this building up to where it needs to be? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member from Inuvik Boot Lake. Minister responsible for Housing NWT.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, again, we are so fortunate that this Assembly approved $150 million over the next three years for housing and public housing replacements across the North. Inuvik is one of the communities that will see public housing replacements, considering many of their housing units are 50 plus years old and families are still staying in those units and struggling in those units. But I talked to Housing NWT about the opportunity to look at purchasing -- perhaps purchasing Nova. They're having ongoing discussions with the landlord to see what's possible and, hopefully, we'll get some good news soon. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister responsible for Housing NWT. Oral questions. Member from Sahtu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today is follow-up from my statement to the Minister of ECC. My first question, what did the ECC do to prepare for the 2025 wildfire season? Mahsi.

Thank you, Member from the Sahtu. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question.

You know, I'd like to start off by saying that, you know, it's early days in the season for 2025 and to date, one thing that our ECC staff did is they've already responded to ten fires in the Northwest Territories. And, unfortunately, of those ten fires, nine were human caused. I'm happy to report that all ten have been declared out.

ECC has also done a lot of work in -- that we scanned for holdover fires to ensure that we're able to properly and proactively address those. We have brought our firefighters on earlier and done larger training engagements across the Northwest Territories with more centralized groups interacting from multiple regions. We've done cross-training between structural and ECC firefighters. And this has started and will continue through the summer to ensure that our -- we have a coordinated effort when we're -- if we run into instances of wildland/urban interface fires. We've worked with the NWT Association of Communities and held wildfire preparedness workshop in Yellowknife in April 23rd to 25th. We had participants from all across the NWT, Mr. Speaker, senior staff, community governments, fire chiefs, Indigenous governments, Indigenous organizations, structural firefighters, and from all accounts it was a very successful endeavour. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for that reply. In conjunction, I'm hoping that the Minister is also in communication with the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

My second question is how is the Department of ECC implementing the recommendations from the external 2023 wildfire response review? Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the MNP report that came out last year, you know, had a number of recommendations for the department, and we've agreed in principle with all of the recommendations that were put forward and we've already started planning or implementing many of them. You know, our crews and aircraft were brought on earlier to complete training. That was one of the recommendations. We've gone through and started to -- to the Member's point, you know, a collaborational effort with MACA and the rest of the GNWT to built capacity within the incident command system. We've recently implemented a qualification and certification standard across the territory. We have installed backup communications in most locations. We brought on a safety officer to help deal with health as well as mental health concerns after our staff and our members. And we've been successful in obtaining significant federal funding that will assist in implementing a wide range of wildfire prevention and mitigation and response actions. And we will continue to work with all other departments and agencies, local communities, Indigenous governments, Indigenous organizations, and the people of the NWT to ensure that our communities are fire resilient in the future. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. Final supplementary. Member from the Sahtu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for that response there. If I can make a suggestion: The safety officer could be -- he or she's duties expanded for community audits.

My last question there, Mr. Speaker, is how does the Department of Environment and Natural Resources protect communities from wildfires? I understand there's a FireSmart program, for example. Those types of protection proactive measures. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think the department has done a fabulous job of committing to, you know, improving our wildfire preparedness across the NWT.

We've increased human and financial investment. We have the community wildfire resilience contribution program that was launched this year and is offering just under $2 million of additional investment in FireSmart implementation for communities and organizations across the territory. We're actively working with communities to provide preparedness and mitigation training.

Additionally, we've been working with closely with the NWT Association of Communities to fulfill vegetation management projects within communities, community wildfire protection plans. And we assisted in having them leverage $20 million in 2022 that will support these activities through 2030.

ECC has provided recommendations and advice to communities, individuals, and other organizations on hazard assessment and risk mitigation, which can certainly assist with the emergency planning. And we've worked in 29 forested communities in the NWT to update their community wildfire protections plans, provide advice in areas to help them reduce the risk from wildfires. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife North.