Finance committee  It's a very good question. The GDP is a measure, but it's not the only measure, and when you look at the north, you really have to take into consideration these extenuating circumstances. Because we are northern, because we have such a small population with such a large geography, it's really hard to just look at GDP and to take a look at the fulsome picture of whether or not we are thriving from community to community.

Finance committee  It's a simple question yet one that's hard to answer. You don't want to bite the hand that feeds you. That's for sure.

Finance committee  It's like any institution; everything needs assessment and needs to make sure it's working as efficiently as possible. I would say we are happy with CanNor. We're happy with the representation. We believe that there's an easy connect. It's very easy for my office to reach out to the personnel in the offices, and we have a great rapport there.

Finance committee  Currently we are considering two routes. One is the Alaskan route, which would go through Juneau. We'd connect Whitehorse to Skagway, Alaska, through the South Klondike Highway. That's a connection that goes into Seattle, Washington. The other application we are working with is the Dempster route, which would connect Dawson City to Inuvik along the Dempster Highway, a more northern and a Canadian connection, and that would connect to the Mackenzie Valley fibre line as well.

Finance committee  When it comes to Arctic Fibre, that would be NWT's consideration, not Yukon's.

Finance committee  It's always changing; that's for sure. There is nothing I would rely on right now.

Finance committee  On the conversations about exporting power, we've only scratched the surface on that. I don't think our government has ever asked B.C., for example, if they'd want to buy power from Yukon. It's been a different conversation. We've also, in my opinion, wasted some time and energy in the last exercise on next-generation hydro because we didn't consider the first nations traditional territories from the beginning.

Finance committee  On a completely high level, I believe, in terms of Canada's stance, when you take a look at the Paris agreement and moving forward from there, and at the commitment of the international community to tackle anthropomorphic climate change, I think Canada is in the right place at the right time and we're doing the right thing.

Finance committee  When you do come to Yukon, you have to come to Dawson City.

Finance committee  The environmental consideration makes a great segue as to why. Dawson City is built on permafrost, and we're seeing that the permafrost is melting. The north sees the effects of climate change at a much higher rate than anywhere else in the world. We need to prepare for those inevitabilities.

Finance committee  Absolutely. As you know, Mr. Bagnell, previous to my political career I was president of the Dawson City Music Festival for a couple of years. I'm a musician as well. I know very well the importance of tourism and culture to Yukon. My executive assistant was also the producer of Dawson City Music Festival for a time.

Finance committee  Oh, absolutely. In Yukon we're approaching an energy cliff, in a lot of ways. A lot of our energy is coming from hydro. In Whitehorse, with our hydro dam project, upwards of 95% of our power is from hydro. We do need to take into consideration, if any of these mining interests come to fruition, that we'll be in a situation where we'll have to make some major decisions as to how to supply our energy.

Finance committee  Yes. The intent is to make sure that all of the capacities are self-reliant and self-resilient. When I went to federal finance minister Morneau's office with the Teslin Tlingit Council chief, we talked about how partnerships with municipal governments and first nations governments actually help make sure that the dollars we get in federal transfers stay in Yukon, and therefore we develop resilience in these communities and self-reliance in these communities.

Finance committee  That's a very good question. It always concerns me. Take a look at 2008 and 2009. We had one of the largest geochemistry “experiments”, I guess, for lack of a better word, in North America happening in our backyard in Klondike and throughout Yukon with the exploration boom. If you take a look at the initiatives the government provided for at that time, we didn't go to production in any of those areas.

Finance committee  I think we surprise people a lot of times in Yukon with how ahead of the curve we are in certain areas. One of the things that separates us from other northern areas is that all of our communities, except for one, are accessible by road. When you're transferring to a more modern economy with roads, we need that accessibility to technologies as well.