R.J. Simpson

Thank you. So under the Indigenous languages line, there's a number of different initiatives that are taking place. The Member's correct that there's work being done to develop an Indigenous languages diploma. We have a mentor apprentice program. Perhaps I can get the deputy minister to point out detail on some of the number of programs that we have. Thank you.

Thank you for that, and so there's yeah, there's a few areas here. So we have things like culture and heritage and we have Indigenous languages. Most of our Indigenous languages funding, or a significant portion of it, comes from the federal government and we have been negotiating with the federal government for a new agreement. We are not don't have that signed off yet but we expect that we will get an extension of what we currently have.

There has been a lot of work in the past number of years on Indigenous languages, and I think it is one of the bright spots in the GNWT.

And in terms of...

Thank you. No, I don't but I want to temper everyone's expectation that this is I don't think this will be a silver bullet, and I think in fact there might be very few units that might even be available for licensed childcare. So the work is underway but we don't have an anticipated completion date yet. Thank you.

Thank you. So there is Indigenous, you know, language programming on the radio, and it is much appreciated, and I know that we utilize it every time we need to get information out to Indigenous communities. But while this line item might be stagnant, the way that people can communicate has changed over the years. And so, you know, Facebook, YouTube, there are other ways that people now communicate and I'm not sure that, you know, a focus on radio is necessarily the way to go. That being said, I can ask the deputy minister if there's been any conversations in the department because I could be...

Thank you. Over the years, ECE has built up its capacity for communications, and I think it's really been put to the test over the past two years with a lot of significant and rapid changes due to the, you know, ever changing environment with COVID. And so I'm confident that we have the ability to communicate that, and I agree with the Member that we do need to communicate that. There's a lot of interest in education and every aspect of it, especially in changes as large as communications. And so we are you know, we will be working with the education bodies to ensure that the changes are...

Thank you. I'm not sure what the number today is. It does vary between 11 and 13, and so I suspect that it's still between 11 and 13. And it looks like it's 13 today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I don't have examples of, you know, RCMP giving talks in the schools but the RCMP does do a lot of community outreach. It's a little more prevalent I think in smaller communities where they have more opportunity to have the those oneonones. But I think that it should almost go without saying that it's not a great career, being a drug dealer. And it's not just the RCMP's job to instill that in people. Everyone needs to do that. And so in the education system, we can't just say don't be a drug dealer. We need to say here are some alternatives, these are things you...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So during 2020, we saw an increase in drug trade, and there's been a trend over the last number of years of increases in that trend. That being said, there are, you know, new resources in this proposed budget for the RCMP. There have been new RCMP in Hay River in the last few years, and we have more RCMP per person than anywhere else in Canada. We have twice as many RCMP per person as most places in Canada. So I'm not sure that the issue is something we can arrest our way out of, but we definitely have a significant amount of enforcement already in the territory. Thank...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I was just on the phone with the mayor today of Hay River to talk about such a meeting where we bring together those organizations, and I'm happy to do that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If anyone's familiar with the war on drugs in the United States, I think they've spent about a trillion dollars over the past number of decades and they have more people incarcerated for, you know, possession of drugs than anywhere else in the world, and they still have problems. So if this is like I said, this isn't something we can arrest our way out of. Now that being said, the RCMP are well aware of the situation. I know a lot of people measure the success of the RCMP by, you know, the number of maybe drug dealers in their communities. But the fact is that if there...