Caitlin Cleveland

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, that's not a hundred percent of the story. That is definitely the primary driver for their reductions, but it is not a hundred percent. But I can definitely say that their selection of what dollars that they were not going to use and suggest for this exercise were intentionally not tied to transformation. But for additional detail, I would like the opportunity to invite another assistant deputy minister to join me at the table.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the trades trailers are owned by Aurora College and so would fall under their operations. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would have to phone a friend for that one, but I believe it is worked into federal and GNWT agreements with Indigenous governments. But may I please pass to the deputy minister.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. So this line item  or the difference, sorry, in this line item here is a decrease mainly due to reductions of $460,000. And this is partly offset by funding from the Canada Council of the Arts to support artists across the Northwest Territories. And if the Member just gives me two seconds  sorry, guys.

So this reduction here is largely due to a reduction in heritage centres across the territory. And so originally, there was a budget there of half a million dollars in the previous Assembly. That budget line item was moved up to a million dollars. But what we...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we're just pulling up that information right now. Potentially maybe we could come back to the Member on the exact number of total spaces in the territory that we are funding. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I think it's important to note that not everything that the government does lands in the business plans. There's still action plans that are still daytoday efforts that are done by public servants and by Northerners day in and day out that don't land themselves in the business plans per se. But educating children and making sure that we are preparing them for the rest of their lives is something that is constantly top of mind for northern educators, for parents, for community members, and something that we need to continue to do. So while these...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the Member's excitement and ensuring that we're continuing to work on this. I think that it'll be a exciting term for creating systems for people wanting to come to Canada and make the Northwest Territories home.

We have a staff member within Education, Culture and Employment at this time. Moving forward, we will be transitioning a second staff member from ITI over to Education, Culture and Employment. And so being able to really double that team, I think, will do a lot of good for ECE in being able to support people within this space. And...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, ECE receives $5.9 million from the federal government that is immediately distributed to Indigenous governments for the purposes of Indigenous languages. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, just to go back really quickly, I do have the number for the Member in terms of the change in enrolment for Tlicho region, and it's 4 percent. So a decline of 4 percent for Tlicho region schools.

And then in regards to the degree programs from Aurora College, Aurora College has spoken about having their first degree program be general studies, and they pushed that back by a year. Originally, they had intended that that would start this fall, and so that would mean that it would start next fall. Beyond that, I do not have that information as of yet from...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the Member's comments for sure. I can reflect on some recent decisions that were made that came out that were not  well, that were fully baked, we will call them. And so it's  you know, it's definitely one where finding that sweet spot of how people want to see ideas come out of the oven is definitely one that depends who you're chatting with. And so I appreciate the Member's support on this and look forward to being able to update him on what those timelines look like once we've had the opportunity to make sure that we're going about...