Caitlin Cleveland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's very difficult for me to base all of my answers on hypothetical. I think what the college is looking at doing is exploring how this works for Northerners, and I would expect that they would be consistently evaluating this shift and this change.

The other thing that was referenced today was different opportunities that communities are taking advantage of with additional partnerships both through Indigenous governments and through community governments. And I think that those will continue to flourish in the territory as well. We do have relationships through Dechinta...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, between April 2005 to March 2024, Prosper NWT has supported 741 businesses across the Northwest Territories. So I certainly couldn't list them all out here but -- and then through those 741 businesses, they have disbursed approximately $128 million. But it might be of interest to Members -- and mind you these are regional areas, not political areas -- but:

162 businesses from the South Slave, that was 40 percent of the funds disbursed, $52 million;

386 businesses in the North Slave, that was $30 million, or 24 percent of funds disbursed;

60...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through yourself, I'd like to pass to assistant deputy minister Cyr.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, we've got the SEED funding program, which is a grant program and affords grants to people who are looking to invest in business ventures through ITI. We also have community futures. Now, community futures is a loan type program. And then in -- outside of ITI and Prosper NWT, which is now arm's length, we also have a loan type program there, and they also do have some grants. Like, for example, their digital investment piece is through grants. So there isn't an intent in this budget to increase the amount going to community futures, but all that to...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, we have career development officers that work for the department of education and their role is to connect, through our client navigators, income assistance clients with job opportunities for people who are able and are willing to take that route. So these career development officers have access to a suite of different workforce development programs that can be paired with an employer. So there is funding, and substantial funding out there, for example for training, for helping to pay a wage for somebody as they learn how to do a job, to...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So we are up to a total of 1400 businesses in the Northwest Territories.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, I absolutely want the voices of committee to be involved in this work. And so between the months of April and July, there will be an engagement period that will include Indigenous governments, the public, stakeholders, and certainly committee and MLAs as well. There will be a draft discussion paper that will be produced from there and engagement -- sorry, engagement results collated and organized and then also facilitated visioning sessions that will be done through ITI themselves and then in the fall, so in November roughly, release of an NWT...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, we're working closely with Diavik. Diavik has their My Path program where they identify, you know, who the worker is, what their skill set is, and what their intentions post closure are. So some people intend to retire. Some people intend to start their own business. I had the opportunity to sit with a Member from the South Slave -- sorry, with a resident from the South Slave who currently works at Diavik and is in the process of putting their ducks in a row to get their own business started. And some of them intend to stay with Rio Tinto proper...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In regards to any proposals, if that is referring to future reviews, if there are some kind of scheduled right now, there aren't right now. What we're doing is we're looking at how the program is being implemented throughout the Northwest Territories, the new income assistance programming, and we're very much monitoring how that is flowing out the door given that it is a new program and want to ensure that we're well informed and up to date with how it's working for Northerners. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, yes, it has come into force but it's being implemented in a phased approach. So for contracts over $250,000, it has been implemented and enforced. Thank you.