Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So we have our own after-action review that we are currently trying to start. I wish that the RFP would have gone out last week, and we wanted a bit more time to work with Members but that is going to happen imminently. And so that review is going forward. Happy to hear anything that Members have to say on that. I know that I was -- I know my answers on the floor of the House yesterday. That's what that -- that was the response I was told I was going to get on the floor of the House, but if there's more feedback that the Members have I'm happy to hear that. If there's specific feedback, I'm happy to hear that. In terms of the draft -- the order related to the public inquiry, the motion required or called for collaboration with AOC on that, and so I'm happy to have that discussion as well as we work on that order. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It can be difficult to negotiate in public and through the media, and so when we are trying to work with just the Members, we want to avoid that type of noise that comes with that. It is a difficult balance. I get where the Member is coming from. You know, I struggled with that as a Regular Member. But the fact is that, you know, we are elected to do that work on behalf of constituents. So sometimes the constituents don't have all of the information but they've appointed us to look at that information and make our best judgments. But I understand where the Member is coming from. It's a constant battle between keeping too much confidential and releasing too much in the public at inappropriate times. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, no, that is not my intention. I have a responsibility when the House brings forward a motion and recommendations to carefully consider those. I also have a responsibility to ensure that we are operating the government in a responsible manner. I think there's a lot of information that -- there's a lot of assumptions about what a public inquiry is. Even yesterday, even after I tried to clarify some of the facts around what we can and can't do, there was still assumptions remaining. You know, there was comparisons of our Inquiries Act to the federal Inquiries Act without taking into account the other federal acts that interact with the federal Public Inquiries Act and allow them to set budgets. There were comments about independence of certain other reports. So there's a lot of these things that as the government, when we do something we actually need to know the facts. We actually have to do research. We have to look into things. It's a lot more than just, you know, standing up in the House and saying something. There's a lot of work behind the scenes. So we need to do that work, Mr. Speaker, and we intend on doing that work. Thank you.

I'd like to redirect that to the Minister of MACA. Thanks.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document: Follow-up letter for Oral Question 3-20(1), Implementation of the Recommendations of Strengthening Supports for Non-Profit Sector. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So just for the public's awareness and the new Members, when these motions come forward and they ask for a response under 120 days, the government generally abstains so we will be abstaining. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the public inquiry is being sold as the only way for the public's voices to be heard and as the only morally upright option that we have. But neither of those are accurate. I caution Members from making this an issue of good versus evil. I think the Member from Hay River South spoke pretty eloquently about his connection to the evacuations and the wildfire season. I have a similar one. It's been two years now where it's been constant disasters, constant evacuations. And when I went door to door, this is the one thing, this was on the top of everyone's list to talk about. It was on the top of my list. It was my number one priority when I came to this Assembly, was to ensure that what we saw happened last year doesn't happen again, that we are better prepared.

There's been a lot of talk about what a public inquiry is and what it isn't. A public inquiry is something established under our Public Inquiries Act. Every piece of legislation, every Public Inquiries Act across the country is different. Ours is decades and decades old. It's, I think, 12 clauses. It's very short. It doesn't have a lot of guidance. There's not a lot of options in there. There's not a lot of room to create what, I think, a lot of the Members think can be created.

We can create an establishment order that will define what the inquiry will look like. Based on this motion, that establishment order includes the Commissioner ensuring that perspectives of all Northwest Territories' residents are adequately captured in the public inquiry undertaken by the board in relation to the 2023 wildfires. That's a pretty big scope. That's 45,000 people who are now eligible to participate in this public inquiry. We have no ability to cap how many people want to participate or how long they testify for.

Through the establishment order, we can do certain things. We can set up certain parameters. We can define the number of board members. We can define the remuneration for board members, so how much they're going to get paid, the remuneration and travel expenses for witnesses, a deadline for the final report. And just so everyone knows, I think the number of final reports that have been on time with public inquiries is probably a small minority. These are processes that always -- almost always cost more and take longer than anyone expects.

We can define the board's ability to engage legal services. And there will be legal services. There will be many lawyers. Yes, with the public inquiry I expect a number of lawyers to be buying second and third homes.

We can define the board's ability to engage with experts, accountants, engineers, court reporters, people to help them set up the venues, people to arrange travel, to broadcast the proceedings, all of those types of things.

So what we can't do, like I said, is limit the number of witnesses, limit the time each witness has to provide evidence, provide a process for the board to follow. And that's one of the strengths of a public inquiry where they're not being controlled, they can control their own process.

Another thing we can't do under our legislation is set a budget. So I'm not sure what legislation other Members are looking at or where they're finding this ability for us to set a budget, but I don't see it in our legislation, especially when other pieces of public inquiries legislation have explicit language talking about setting a budget.

Regulations can be made with respect to any matter that the Commissioner considers necessary for carrying out the purposes and provisions of the act. And so that allows some discretion in terms of the regulations you can make but those regulations have to tie to one of those 12 clauses, and there is nothing in there that I can see that would allow us to actually set the budget. And even if we do set a budget, even if there was that ability, Mr. Speaker, everything costs more than we expect it to cost. I don't think I've seen anything estimated that has come in on budget. And so what happens when the public inquiry runs out of money and they haven't made their way out of Yellowknife yet to look at Behchoko or the South Slave? Do we just say well, that's it? No, we keep pumping that money into it.

People want to be heard. That's what we heard a lot of today: People want to be heard. And I know people want to be heard. I want to be heard. I'm lucky I'm in this position; I get to be heard about this because I get to speak about this. It's therapeutic. People want to heal. They need to be able to speak to heal. A public inquiry is not a place to heal. It's like a courtroom. You're a witness. There's a potential that you'll be cross-examined or examined and then cross-examined.

There's not -- there's a very, very limited option for anonymity. You know, we hear a lot about government employees, they won't want to participate in an independent third-party review because they're concerned. They're not going to want to get up on the stand and be on TV making their comments. I don't know how that is any more accessible for people. You know, there's businesses who do lots of work with the government. I've heard some of them want to make comments anonymously. You can't do that in a public inquiry either. There's a limited set of circumstances where information or your identity can be kept confidential, but if we're talking about many people who want this because they're afraid their boss will get mad at them or they think that in the future they may not get a contract, at some point that's no longer a public inquiry if everyone is anonymous for the reasons like that. So I don't expect that that will be the case. I don't think that this idea that this is a way for people to have their voices heard anonymously is accurate. Nothing's admissible in a public inquiry that's not admissible in court. So hearsay, anonymous unsigned submissions, those things don't fly in a public inquiry. I don't think the public wants to be put on the stand like they're in a courtroom and testify. I don't think that's what healing is.

And as a Member of this last Assembly, I've seen a public inquiry. It was -- there was no healing involved in that. I don't know one person who felt like that went well, who felt like that was a good idea. I'm talking about the inquiry into a Member's actions. It was referenced earlier. One person, one location over a short period of time. That inquiry cost $800,000. Members of the Assembly were pretty shocked when that happened because we all realized that we put this into motion, and it became its own thing. We lost all control, all ability to control those costs. So what did we do? We actually changed the legislation to be able to avoid a public inquiry. I think that speaks volumes to our Public Inquiries Act here in the territory.

So what's the alternative, Mr. Speaker? Well, we propose an alternative. This is what I've envisioned back when I was on the campaign trail. An independent third-party review done by a contractor, whose reputation is on the line, who is going to hand us a report with their logo on it, and they're not going to want anything in there that's whitewashed. You know, there was comments that their work will not be transparent. There's ways to make it transparent, Mr. Speaker. I've offered to the Members to set up an independent commission. We could appoint a member. The Members could appoint a member. The Council of Leaders could appoint a member. And that would be a buffer between the contractor and the GNWT. They would have access to all of the draft reports of the contractor, all the material that the contractor has access to. If the contractor requests something and they don't get that, the board would know and there's legal remedies in the contract to address those. It's essentially the same as compelling information through a public inquiry.

And there was comments that they might not know what questions to ask. Well, that's why we want to start with extensive public engagement. Extensive, Mr. Speaker. There's the opportunity for people to write, write in, and have that information brought into the review. We're having in-person meetings, public meetings, Mr. Speaker. And those don't have, you know, departmental staff. I've been to those before in Hay River a couple years ago. We had one of those about the flood. And so I know what those operate like. And there's the option to provide input anonymously. We can put provisions in the contract that say information the contractor receives from individuals, GNWT employees, or who indicate they want to be anonymous, we can require that they do not share that information with the government. So here are options that are based in fact, based in reality, and not, you know, based in other pieces of legislation from other jurisdictions.

Our review will have an extensive engagement, like I said, with the public as well as with community governments, with Indigenous governments, the local, regional, and territorial EMOs, the emergency management organizations, with NGOs, with businesses, with chambers of commerce. The reports produced by the City of Yellowknife, let's say, or Avens or any of these other organizations or communities, those will be analyzed. We're going to look at the preparedness level of the NGOs, of the public, of the government. We're going to examine roles and responsibilities, the communications that went out to the public. From all of this, we're going to produce a comprehensive report. It's going to include a timeline of the wildfire season so we can see when things happened, when this fire started; why we were driving out of Hay River moments before, for many people while the fire was crossing that highway.

Mr. Speaker, I watched the video that we took the other night -- or the other night I watched a video I took on the way out of Hay River, and I'm looking at it and I thought why was I even driving that direction? It was sunny when I left. Halfway to Enterprise, the sky turned black and there was just red and yellow in front of me. So I'm well aware that there's issues that need to be addressed. That should not have happened. I want to make sure that doesn't happen again. That's one of the main reasons that I'm here.

We're going to look at the strengths of the response and what we could build on, and we're going to look at the weaknesses and the gaps. And out of this is going to come evidence-based recommendations, not just for the government but for everyone, because everyone has a role in this. We want to -- this is going to assist the NGOs. It's going to assist the public. It's going to assist everyone. And that's on top of what is already happening. I don't want people to think that this is something far in the future. There is a lot of work that has already happened. There's additional training that's going on. There's updated plans within departments. We're bringing firefighters on earlier. So there's a lot of work that is happening, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we need to answer the big questions. There's no two ways about it. We need to answer the big questions. People need assurances that what went wrong is going to be fixed. People need to feel heard and people need to heal. And that's the goal with this review. That's what we want to achieve. So after these reviews, after they are made public -- probably the biggest reviews the Government of the Northwest Territories has ever undertaken. So after all of this information is out there, after everyone's had a chance to speak up, have their voices heard and see how we are making changes based on their voices, if after all of that people want a public inquiry, then we can look at that. That will give us time to amend the legislation so that we're not stuck with this archaic legislation that is not going to do what people imagine it's going to do.

So, Mr. Speaker, for those reasons, and because we don't know how long this inquiry's going to take, how much it's going to cost, and one thing I do know it's going to be a distraction. It's not going to be pleasant. We've experienced a public inquiry before; we know it's not pleasant. It's not an experience anyone wants to be involved with. We have an alternative. I'd be happy if the Members will participate in that alternative. I would love to have the Regular Members appoint someone to be on that oversight committee, to oversee that contract, to ensure that I'm not, as was alluded to earlier, covering anything up.

So, Mr. Speaker, if anything good has come of this it is that there has actually been debate in the public about the wildfires, about legislation, about politics, and civic engagement. So this is a moment when we can come together. This doesn't have to be divisive. It's an opportunity for the territory to come together, work on fixing what went wrong and moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Cabinet will be abstaining from any amendments, or the amendments that we have been made aware of, and reserve the vote until the final motion that committee wants to bring forward is put together. I understand there may be a number of amendments and so we'll be abstaining on all of them. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Friday, February 23rd, 2024, I will present Bill 2, Missing Person's Act, to be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.