Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on some of the questions today around the population growth strategy, the questions that were already asked earlier. I have never seen the population growth strategy. Since there doesn’t seem to be one in writing, I’d like to suggest some subtitles: Get People, Keep People, Make People, Extend People.
Now, I seriously have some suggestions under each one of these.
Get People: When it comes to getting people, does anybody actually keep an eye on labour markets? Like, we talked about the commercial fishery closing in Alberta. There is a group in a specialized industry. We’ve got two million pounds of fish, a sustainable harvest floating around in Great Slave Lake every year which never seems to get brought in. I mean, are there any people in any department? Like, where are the people that are working on the growth strategy, population growth strategy? I mean, are there people who are working on specific initiatives such as looking at labour markets in other jurisdictions? The oil patch, they’re laying off tens of thousands of people. We need people up here in different disciplines. Is anybody actually working on getting people? What are you doing?
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a committee of Cabinet that includes ECE, it includes ITI, Finance, Environment and Natural Resources, just about every department is represented around the table. We’re working on those types of things, the labour market information. We’re tracking the work on the Nominee Program being shepherded and looked at by a Minister. Minister Lafferty will be making an announcement in the House. The commercial fisher piece, we’ve got the money in the budget. The question of are we doing stuff, yes, we’ve also set up a committee that involves all the key industry players, members of the chamber to look at ways that we can collectively pool our efforts and combine our efforts to hit that target of 2,000 in five years.
I’m sensing that some people on this side of House would like to help you out with that, and if they could see something in writing, perhaps we could make some valuable contributions to that initiative, to that strategy.
Now, on to the topic of keeping people. Seven hundred people left the Northwest Territories last year, but because of a high birthrate, that was offset to a larger extent.
Is there any way of tracking why people are leaving the Northwest Territories? I don’t know. I know you can’t do exit interviews, but is it possible there’s any way to find out why people are leaving? I mean, we can guess. The cost of living, we can guess. But do we have any way of collecting that data?
Yes, we do track that, and we have some ideas and we get some feedback. A lot of it is the issue of family; some of it is the cost of living; some of it is retirement.
In regard to the Member’s earlier comment of an interest of committee, we’d be happy to get all and any suggestions that committee members have in terms of their suggestions, and if there are other suggestions in terms of involvement in the work we’re doing, we’d be happy to look at what they would propose as well.
Under the topic of making people, we have some young families in the South Slave that are having, like, four and five children, and I have a guess that there would be more people having larger families if we had something comparable to the child tax credit, but something made in the North.
Has the Cabinet ever contemplated a way of supporting young families who want to have larger families in helping them in some way financially through something similar to what the federal government does with the child tax credit, something made in the North?
That issue of some type of enhanced encouragement to address the issue the Member has referred to, increasing our population through birthrate, we’ve had some initial looks at it. We haven’t reached any definitive decisions yet of how we would do that in a way that would really promote that and it would actually show value. We know that in Quebec, I think they offered $3,000 per child. It’s something that’s on our to-do list. We’ve been focusing on some of the more immediate things, but it’s something that has been brought forward.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Under the topic of extending people, we all know about the demographic bubble of the baby boomers and the people are aging, and we just heard a statistic this week that if people actually make it to pensionable age, the now anticipated age of people who are on a pension is like 89 for men and 91 for women. Anyway, we have got to address that demographic, that growing demographic of seniors who would stay in the Northwest Territories if there was a wider variety of options for them in terms of accommodation. Not just public housing but accommodation with caregivers that people could actually, who could afford to, contribute financially to.
Where are we at in working to try and find ways to accommodate older people to keep them here longer so they don’t have to go south to those types of accommodations that they would like?
That issue was flagged in the budget address as well. We do a significant number of things already. We are putting some money in this budget to try to extend the staffing complements in Yellowknife, Simpson and, I believe, Fort Smith for starters. But we want to and we already do a number of things for seniors.
I appreciate the Member’s concern and we are intending on looking at those longer term changes, as well, that we need to deal with as this bubble moves through their lifecycle.
The actuarial tables may have the average person living to 89 for men, for example. The folks, if you do it based on occupation, it tends to be a lot shorter. Politicians, people in high-stress jobs, so if you make it to retirement, if you can grab a fraction of that 89, we’ll be lucky, but knock on wood. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
