Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Next I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Is the committee agreed?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, I understand that any such a program would not fall under the Minister’s mandate. That would actually fall under Education, Culture and Employment, but I’d like to just ask the Minister is he aware that there still is an ongoing summer program where the GNWT partners with the private sector to create employment for students? Thank you.

That’s very interesting to hear. I personally was not aware that the Come Make Your Mark program had worked with 60 businesses. On an ongoing basis, I’d like to ask the Minister what is the vehicle for continuing that liaison with the private sector when it comes to recruiting and retaining people in the North. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are three weeks into what is our traditional annual six-week budget session. It’s not one of my favourite activities, I must say. Our Finance Minister goes out there, he stands up in this House, he makes a budget address. We all go out in the Great Hall; we have a media scrum. They say, what do you think of the budget? What, like as if we didn’t know, what was in the budget?

The way consensus government should work is that way before the budget address is given, we, as committee members, who oversee different departments of this government, have an input into the...

Thank you. We will resume with that after a short break.

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I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of the committee today? Ms. Bisaro.

It’s also been mentioned in this House, suggestions to the government of where we can hire summer students from university who can then get some experience in the area that they’re studying in, but I’d like to ask, and again, that works really well in the public service, but I’d like to ask the Minister what is in place right now for the government to partner with the private sector so that the private sector could also have the ability to identify the post-secondary students and so on who could come to work in their businesses. There used to be a program, and I’m not sure of what the status...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. We’re having somewhat of a theme day today on how we’re going to grow our population, retain and grow our population here in the Northwest Territories. I’ve been kind of talking about that pretty much since the beginning of session on a day-by-day basis. I didn’t have a Member’s statement on that today, but I do have some questions.

When we talk about raising the population and we talk about what this government can do, we’ve been very focused on how we can get NWT residents into the public...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on my line of questioning yesterday that we had for the Minister of Health and Social Services in what must have seemed like a mini theme day for Minister Abernethy, but when we talk about people leaving the Northwest Territories, the outward migration of residents of the North, we need to look at all aspects of that.

Yesterday I spoke about some of the challenges for seniors living in the North: the cost of living, the cost of living independently in their own homes. Today I’d like to talk about another segment of population who we often hear...