Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I made reference to the state of northern and Aboriginal broadcasting in the Northwest Territories by pointing out opportunities in assisting our broadcast station of CKLB. I made reference that capital funds are particularly hard to come by. The station has struggled to keep up with maintenance of its community transmitters and has been unable to implement new communication technologies. In essence, as I see it, Aboriginal media should not be a second-class citizen in today’s NWT broadcast community and it deserves better. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Training has always been a major component of the Native Communications Society’s work. It has been a springboard for many well-known careers woven into the fabric of our daily life in the Northwest Territories: William Greenland, Peter Hope, William Firth, Richard Van Camp and photographer Dorothy Chocolate are among the first to jump to mind. Therefore, I’m recommending that we build upon this strength and develop a fully funded training program for northern Aboriginal broadcasters, monitored and administered by the society.
Can the Minister tell me how he will assist in making this happen? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. As this House knows, I am a true supporter of anything that contributes to the health and strength of our Aboriginal languages. NCS, the Native Communications Society, is valuable and also contributes towards this.
Again, there is no doubt that those talented individuals have worked for the society, as well, and learned from NCS over the years. We fully support that as government, for their contributions over the years.
The Member does put in a very interesting idea about how we can move forward on providing the training to these northern broadcasters. I have instructed my department to work with NCS possibly developing some sort of a training package. Not only that but identifying those students that may be pursuing this at post-secondary. It will consist of northern broadcasters, Aurora College, Aboriginal organizations to keep the language strong. Those are the individuals that I need to coordinate with.
I’m encouraged by what I’m hearing today and I’d like to thank the Minister for that. As mentioned, core funding from Heritage Canada has not changed in over 30 years, and coupled with the meagre advertising revenue and inconsistent GNWT funding, this has created a very lean operational base in which to maintain the open doors.
Can the Minister tell me how he’s going to leverage what is possible from the GNWT as own-source funding in order to meet this growing concern, and how is he going to act as a lead negotiator with CanNor opportunities?
The CanNor funding has got its own sources and they deal directly with NCS, but I can speak to the areas of meeting with the federal Minister, the former Minister and the current Minister of Canadian Heritage, on a number of occasions to lobby the federal government for additional funds on Aboriginal language in general. This work, obviously, is ongoing work that we’re doing between the two parties. This year we’ve entered into negotiations, as well, with the federal government on the Canada-NWT Languages Agreement. We are on the verge of negotiations with the federal government and it will be happening this fall.
I thought we were on a roll here, but it seems at a little bit of an impasse. Some of the things that I can introduce to the Minister are simply just indexing what we’re giving annually to this society so we can actually increase with the cost of living.
As I mentioned earlier, CKLB is a Timex watch working in a digital age. Therefore, I’m recommending that the proper funding be provided to assist northern and Aboriginal broadcasters with, specifically, capital equipment replacement costs.
Can the Minister tell me what he’ll do to support this initiative?
This is an area that we’ve been working very close with NCS, identifying the capital projects, and they’ve submitted proposals to our shop, the GNWT, through ECE, and we’ve been working very closely with Heritage Canada, as well, because they provide the capital expenditures. Those are some of the discussions that we are currently having with the federal government on behalf of NCS. At the same time, NCS, the CEO is also advocating with the federal government, as well, so at both angles we’re pushing the federal government. We’ll do what we can to push that even further.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In order for us to make sure we do not hit this wall of worry for our northern and Aboriginal broadcasters in the future, it’s imperative that we put in place the right evaluation tools to prevent this mishap from occurring again.
Assuming we can get a new funding model in place, can the Minister indicate to the House by what measures he plans to evaluate progress after this renewed funding is made available?
Since we’ve been dealing with NCS the last few years now on the reporting mechanism with the federal government, we’ve been talking about evaluating and reviewing of their proposals, as well, and the annual reports that are coming in. I completely agree, because we are a public government, and the way that the money is spent is essential to be a responsible government. This is an area that we’re primarily focusing on.
My department also recently discussed the 2014-15 contributions with NCS, which included an enhanced review of the outcome. This was done with NCS agreement, so they’ve also supported our government, as well, and we support them in return. The annual reporting requirement, which I’m very pleased to advise the Members that NCS has provided on time and in accordance with the requirements.
In closing, I’d just like to give the Members a heads-up that I would like to restate that this government supports NCS and, indeed, our community broadcasters in terms of their contribution in promoting Aboriginal languages across the NWT and I would like to thank them for the excellent job that they do on a daily basis.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
