Mahsi, Madam Chair. Mahsi to committee and others who made comments regarding the bill.

I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories undertake an independent, third party, comprehensive review of Government of the Northwest Territories' fire prevention and suppression with public engagement.

And further, this review should consider the policy framework, coordination with other governments and agencies, funding for these activities, as well as departmental practices concerning firefighter safety.

And furthermore, findings of the review should be made publicly available on a Government of the Northwest Territories website. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment took the job of reviewing Bill 74, Forest Act, very seriously. The bill itself will impact residents across the Northwest Territories in a tangible way if it receives assent, and the bill is the first to be co-drafted in the Northwest Territories.

A significant amount of the committee's time and energy went in to reviewing this bill line by line, listening to what the people thought about the bill, and brainstorming solutions to problems identified by committee members. This work is outlined in the committee's report which was read into the record on September 27th, 2023.

The committee received six written submissions and met with residents in person in three regions of the Northwest Territories to hear their perspectives on this matter. The committee consistently heard the need for information to be public and for climate change to be accounted for when decisions are being made about Northwest Territories forests.

Madam Chair, I also want to take this time to acknowledge that the standing committee travelled to Enterprise in June of 2023 to discuss Bill 74. The leadership of Enterprise showed the standing committee the firebreaks they had been building around their community. Madam chair, at that time the community of Enterprise was asking for more support from the government to help them build bigger firebreaks. The community was doing all they could with the resources they had, but they knew it wasn't enough. Unfortunately, a wildfire overtook the community of Enterprise just weeks later.

The recommendations formulated by the committee address the main concerns heard by both stakeholders and members of the public:

• Public information;
• Climate change;
• Public engagements; and,
• Consistency of forest management decisions.

It cannot go unmentioned the immense amount of respectful collaboration and negotiations that took place between this committee and the technical working group for Bill 74. Seeing as this bill was co-drafted, the committee was pleased to work with not just the Government of the Northwest Territories but representatives from Indigenous governments on workshopping this bill to make it as thorough and inclusive as possible.

The committee would like to thank all members of the technical working group for working so collaboratively with the committee. The committee expresses gratitude to everyone who made the effort to provide us with their thoughts in writing and in person during committee's review.

Individual Members may have additional comments. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Yeah, I was on the committee that travelled with social development on this Education Act. Although it was specific to several items that would give some leverage to the department in accessing school records from the communities, we did hear, as my colleague from -- the MLA for the Great Slave spoke passionately about here, she pretty much captured everything that was out there. But there was other ones that I heard from the Beau-Del, you know, education council members up there that they're saying well, all these changes we're looking at making on this first round, you know, how is that going to improve the education of the students? And I was really, you know, taken aback by that because that was -- that's been my, you know, concern since the start of the 19th Assembly when I took on education as a campaign issue from all the concerns I've been hearing from even my community, which is quite surprising. And then finding out a little bit here and there that, you know, even the attendance records were being fudged, you know, they were being overbloated compared to what was actually in the school. So there is -- you know, and the grade levels as mentioned before, that was very dismal. It's surprising that I'm just hearing -- hearing like oh, the grade 12 graduates, they only have grade 8 or less as an actual grade level. And I hope the Minister appreciates why I've been after, you know, what were the actual grade levels in our schools because it becomes important when you have to go out into the world and we don't have our students getting grade 12. And then, you know, I've been saying that before, too, even for the university that NWT is contemplating is that our people are not going to be walking those halls. You know, I really believe that there are, you know, very good educated students out there who we just need to push them a little bit more. We need to challenge, you know, challenge them at the community levels. We grew up; I think everybody -- everything was all right, you know. My aunts and my uncles, they were Dene. They spoke the language. They didn't have the education, but I turned out okay. That's because it was the fundamentals of the three Rs - reading, writing, arithmetic. That's what I see is kind of lacking in the schools. We don't know what's really happening in the schools either because nobody is having meetings with the community. It was just specific to parents, they get little notes. There's no community meetings, you know, and nobody knows what's going on in the school.

I know some of the problems that I've been hearing from parents, you know -- I'm not against the Dene Immersion Program. I know that the Dene are really concerned that there will be a total loss of language. When I was a leader in 2000-2001 for my community, there was a group of people tasked with putting up a language wheel where it showed, you know, the fluent speakers and it goes out and out and that. It really showed that we were losing our language. And with the Dene Immersion Program, I realize it creates employment. That's what it was doing. It created employment. And when we went to school concerts it was just, you know, glorious to see that our students were singing in the Dene Zahtie language. But I'm wondering if there's a different way we could approach it because there's concern that our students weren't learning English or the alphabet in English until grade 4. That's what I was told, grade 4. They didn't know how to read the alphabet. They didn't know how to write the alphabet. That's what I was told. And that became a concern to me because I always said at graduation ceremonies, I always said what the elders -- I still remember what they said. You know, we want good education for our children so they can become doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers and such. That speaks about what we expect from the education system. And from what I see in the small communities, we're not even going to get there. We've lost it.

So everybody that's out there in the district education authorities or councils, the DDECs, the divisional educational councils, chiefs, mayors, Metis presidents, we all have to start talking about the education in the NWT and specifically in our small communities because we've lost -- like, in my community, we've lost a lot of really good southern teachers that were gung-ho about teaching our children. They had the drive but after social passing, all I've been hearing is, you know, out -- it's out there. Teachers are saying well, I don't need to teach them this because they're going to pass anyways. So that complacency is hurting us from the vision of what our elders had been saying, that message that I still preach at graduation ceremonies.

But education is a pretty big topic because everybody says you need the education to get a job. We know there's always other avenues but, you know, to our technical schools you can go to work on equipment and everything else that way, nursing, whatever. But as I've been saying, you know, if we know the student's not going to have grade 12 level when they graduate, at least we should be helping them so that they can pass a trades entrance exam. That's almost like a cop out still.

And we don't have enough teachers in our school systems in the small communities. We've got two, three, four grades for one teacher. And perhaps we don't have enough students. Now that comes another problem.

So everything that I'm saying here, you know, it really warrants almost like a royal commission on Indigenous education in the small communities. In the next Assembly, I really would encourage them to really consider that. We need to go to every community, not cop out and say oh, regional centre and fly them there. Go to every community so you can even see their living standards and what is happening in their community. You really have to understand what's going on here with education. And we need the education department to be a lead in a lot of areas for us as I've been, you know, jumping all over the department because they weren't doing their job I'm saying. Maybe they were doing their job but they just weren't doing it the right way or something. We weren't focused in the area. Because I don't know, I see education, like it could be having a major shift is what I'm kind of seeing. I thought I would mention that. Mahsi for listening.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. That's all I have right now. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Has the department hired engineers, or they're using in-house engineers and have they been to the community yet? What's the expected timeline for this type of work here? Mahsi.

Mahsi for that. Also, infrastructure highways went into the community to shore up the riverbank where it was about five feet from the road -- the access road into the community. And what I noticed that they did there was they just compacted the fill in that area. And that's right next to the river where the ice -- when you look on the riverbanks of -- in that area there, the ice really chews up, you know, the -- the banks there pretty -- you know, a significant amount. And why did infrastructure just put compact fill, knowing that when you do stuff like that it's going to slump anyways once the ice hits it? If you can provide details on that. Mahsi.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I note that the Deh Cho bridge repair work is not listed in here. It's -- I think it's probably repair work but that's the one dealing with the cable failure. I'm just wondering if it's a bigger -- it's a bigger task than originally expected, if they have to bring in an expert from the United Kingdom, and what's the projected estimated cost to repair that project and what's the timeline? Mahsi.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. No further questions.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Yeah, I just thought maybe ITI was on top of everything that they do, especially having to do with fisheries as they're promoting fisheries around the plant -- around the lake I should say, so. Because I'm wondering, you know, people start initiatives and then it just dies, you know, just like on the order papers or something. So I thought ITI would be more, you know -- because I'll be asking those questions. I guess I'll be sending an email so that we keep everybody accountable. We're spending public dollars and, you know, we should know what's happening with it, and the community should know what's happening with it.

Also, at the same time, the MLA, even myself, I should know what's going on with any ITI projects or any ITI funding that's going into my community, whether it's First Nations or anybody else, instead of me finding out through the grapevine. You know, it would be a common courtesy to us as MLAs. And you know how we felt about that before. That was brought up. So I'm just wondering if we could be -- I could be included moving forward on all correspondence. I know it's only got two more weeks to go, but a lot of things could happen in two weeks and projects moving forward. But I would really like to be copied on some -- or notified of what's going on in my region with these public dollars. Mahsi.