Katrina Nokleby

Thank you, Madam Chair. And does the Minister or the department know whether or not or can they somewhat anticipate if that would be part of this funding that's coming from the federal government that we already have been announced, or would we be looking for new funding for these changes or something that would be restructured internally? Thank you.

Yes, that's what I said. So my question is has that been analyzed as part of the supportive living and to see if it's enough for people in the territory or whether or not there's actually a greeter need that hasn't been identified because people aren't aware that they can qualify for programs like that? Thank you.

Thank you for that, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, when I look at the mental wellness and addictions recovery peer support and then just the recovery fund itself, those are both line items that are around a hundred thousand and then $180,000. Those are very low given the sorry, the issues around this problem in our territory.

Can the Minister speak to why we are not seeing any increased money here and why we actually seen a drop? I'm guessing some of that has been COVID money that was just available at that time, the 251 down to $100,000. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just looking as well at the family violence prevention fund which has had a small increase of about just under $10,000. I do note that we have seen a lot of an increase since 20212022 but I have to wonder if that has to do with the COVID or the lingering pandemic effects.

Can the Minister or the department speak to whether that fund is being completely subscribed and whether or not we feel that we need to be offering more money here. Is this a way that we could get monies into the shelters or communities to do shelter work? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm really glad to hear that. It does speak to a lot of the issues that we have heard from many of the smaller communities and the NGOs, and I appreciate that the department has been listening to that.

Given that block funding that's going to be created and I'm sorry, I missed and I'll have to go back and listen to which of those three pots it was that were getting combined will it be available to other organizations within a community, not just the Indigenous governments but, for example, even if just an individual wanted to get together and put an ontheland...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, when I look at the contributions funding in this section, there's a lot of really good pots of funding here that are helpful to communities, Indigenous organizations, etcetera, to get money into the communities and help their people. When I look at the numbers, a lot of that is remaining fairly stagnant. The antipoverty fund, which I know we've done, has increased over the terms of this Assembly, which is great. However, you know, there's things like the family violence prevention fund, which has only gone up slightly; the communitybased suicide prevention...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I hope that we'll have a seat at the table. I think always that any of the experience that I'm sure the department can offer would be well you know, something that would be good to input on. I'm sure you know a lot better than the federal government necessarily what needs to happen. I think that's it for me now. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I'd be happy to tell the Minister about what the popsicle bridge building contest is. So for years now the engineers have been sending out to all out of the communities, all the school groups, if they would like to participate a set and series of popsicle sticks and through that they have to construct a bridge. They are provided with the means to transport the bridges back to Yellowknife if they themselves cannot come to the event. I think Canadian North is usually a sponsor of that shipping. And then they bring them here and we use a machine and we crush them, and we see...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would appreciate that, but I'm disappointed the Minister can't tell the public right now what they are.

Another issue within engineering is that there are only about 13 percent of engineers in Canada who are women, and this is a very stagnant number. When we look at the Department of Infrastructure, it does counter a lot of the other GNWT departments in that it is not a department that has a lot women and particularly not a lot of women that are in technical roles.

Can the Minister speak to how the department is working to increase the diversity of the workforce...

Wrong end of the room. I would like to welcome Natalie Pressman with the CBC that has joined us. It's always nice to have media here. And I can imagine it gets to be quite a long day at times listening to us here. So I appreciate she comes. Thank you.