Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the right to vote is an important piece of what it means to be Canadian. Voting is not just a right guaranteed to you in our democratic system, it is also a responsibility that comes with receiving the benefits of that system. All the services, all the freedoms, all the good things that you enjoy every day, all come with a price: the responsibility of voting to ensure the strength of our system.

Mr. Chair, it wasn't long ago that the right to vote wasn't extended to all Canadians. Up until 1951, women were prohibited for running for their bands' councils under...

The departments right across of the Government of the Northwest Territories make a serious effort to work together. We have a Deputy Ministers Committee that our deputy ministers sit on. The deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, as well as the deputy minister of the Youth, and Education, Culture and Employment. As Ministers, we also have a social committee that we all sit on that both Ministers take part in, and we have actually met with the Minister of Youth to update him on our programs. As any programs change, we will let the Youth Minister know.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs is more than willing to support any community that is looking at accessing any of our programs, so if the MLA would want, we would be willing to send a regional representative in to help them actually fill in the application. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The reason that the accomplishments that we've done with addressing with getting more women into politics wasn't in the mandate speech was because this Cabinet recognized that today is International Women's Day. We decided that it was important enough that we wanted to denote a whole Minister's speech to this issue. It was decided to not put it in there and actually provide a whole Minister's speech to address it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, I'd like to recognize Ms. Angela James, who I consider a huge friend a role model of her own. Ms. James has dedicated her whole life to actually working with Indigenous children and communities to bring forward their strengths and their pride in their culture, and she is one woman who I have known most of my life and I totally respect and bow my head to. Thank you, Ms. James.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Gender-based analysis, gender-based plus analysis, is critical to looking at all policies and procedures that impact. One policy does not apply equally to every situation and every person, so it is important to look within that lens to actually see how different programs, different policies affect individuals, women, people of disabilities, etc.

Yes, we are currently in the process of working with the Northwest Territories Status of Women to look at how we can start to implement gender plus based analysis within the government policies.

Child care is a huge issue for women throughout the Northwest Territories, throughout Canada, and internationally, actually as a barrier to accessing employment and other opportunities as well, but employment is what we speak about today here. To address some of that, the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment did do an increase to the child care subsidies that daycares are getting. He did a reformatting of their formula funding to address that. I am and always will continue to be a strong lobby for child care.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For the first campaign school, we gave $15,000 to the Status of Women, which was what they asked for, to do their campaign school in Hay River. We have just given $25,000 to the Status of Women to do the campaign school in Inuvik. We haven't gotten a financial figure out of the communications campaign yet. Once we finish that, then we will know what we are looking at, and we are planning, as stated in my Minister's statement, that we will be doing more campaign schools throughout, right until the next election. At that time, we will be allocating more monies to that.

The communication campaign, we're just in the middle of developing it now. The reason that we're putting a little bit of still working on it is because we recognize that, when we are doing the campaign schools, that we are only addressing actually to get women into the Legislative Assembly. We are now looking at, once we do a workshop in Inuvik, we will be revising our whole campaign school so that we can address more women so that they can actually run not only for the Legislative Assembly but for Aboriginal governments, for municipal governments, hamlets, etc. Once we've decided our format...

The other person I want to recognize in the House today is Mr. Brad Firth, commonly known as "Caribou Legs." Mr. Firth ran 7,400 kilometres across Canada to raise awareness for family violence and the problem of the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. This is a huge feat, and to you I offer as well my sincere appreciation. Thank you.