Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Member for calling me wise and having wisdom. Sometimes, I wonder, as I age.

Other resources that are available to youth is not an answer I can give at this point. It would take some thought, but I will commit to actually sitting with the Member if he wishes and actually looking at other ways that the community can see this vision actualize.

Again, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs has a variety of programs there, too, with the goal of supporting youth because we recognize that providing supports to youth is important for not only physical activity but also for mental wellness. So we have other initiatives such as the Children and Youth Resiliency Program that can provide supports, too. I am just speaking from what we have as a department, but I can commit to actually having the department work further with the Member if he would like to see if there are other external sources of support to support a youth centre...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to recognize Jonathan Beland, who is our page from Range Lake in the House today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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.

Mr. Speaker, today is International Women's Day, a day recognized throughout the world as a chance to celebrate women's progress towards achieving gender equality while identifying the challenges that still remain. In this spirit, I am pleased to discuss the Government of the Northwest Territories mandate commitment to support the delivery of workshops that help to get women into politics. In the Northwest Territories, women have largely been underrepresented in elected positions at all levels of government.

Mr. Speaker, we have made some progress in the Northwest Territories. I am pleased to...

The Government of the Northwest Territories does recognize universal child care as a very proactive option to address the obstacles, one of the obstacles, for women entering employment. As such, the Minister of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment is looking at universal child care as an option and seeing if it can be realized within our government.