Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There seem to be a lot of questions in that question. I don’t think the Power Corporation is currently contemplating any large hydro developments that will flood communities. If they are, they haven’t informed us on this side of the House. The corporation is committed, of course, to providing reliable power to all of our communities. In fact, there are initiatives to encourage people to reduce their power bill. It is, in some ways, difficult for the corporation because, as people conserve power and use less, they receive less revenue. We are committed to providing safe, reliable, and energy-efficient power to all of our communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier, my colleague asked questions about what we are doing to support diversity and specifically LGBTQ issues within our classrooms. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment. I am wondering what resources the government has committed to LGBTQ communities outside of the classroom in our general communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Under the Safe and Caring Schools Act, we have also made sure that, in the definition, we are getting community support as well. In terms of supporting, I don’t have any financial resources being put forth. That is something we can definitely look at. I did make a commitment to my department to look at the two groups here, the groups here in Yellowknife, and work with them in terms of developing these policies or getting input into the safe and caring schools regulations when the plans come out as well. We will definitely reach out and see what kind of work we can do together. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Minister’s department is also responsible for a great deal of heritage funding and certainly LGBTQ history is a large part of our heritage going back to Bud Orange and the Klippert case. We have great festivals here, and this will be fifth year of Pride NWT, proving yet again that the LGBTQ community is very much integrated into our community. Can the Minister speak to if some of those resources can be made available and if they are currently being done so?
Last week we did go through the main estimates. We did approve the education budget. We did mention that there are some funding sources out there in terms of heritage, as well as the arts and cultures. Some of them are contributions that we can get under $15,000, and I encourage NWT Pride or the events that the Member is mentioning submit an application to our department, and we will take it into consideration.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister is also responsible for the status of youth in the Northwest Territories. Has the Minister committed any of his time in his portfolio to promote the diversity of our youth, and in particular LGBTQ youth, while also promoting tolerance and anti-bullying outside of the classroom, not just in the classroom?
In earlier questions about the gay-straight alliances that are happening in Mackenzie Mountain School and St. Pat’s, I think that is a great avenue to get attention on this area to the communities. I said they could actually be the leads right throughout the Northwest Territories. I do look forward to meeting the two groups and, be they willing, look at how we can try to develop something territorially. Outside of the school, that is very hard to regulate. We are looking at ways that we can do it on the school grounds. Outside, inside the communities, is always something tough. When we did the consultations on the safe and caring schools, it was mentioned it takes whole community to address these issues. That is something we want to encourage residents of the Northwest Territories to speak up, step up, and to make sure that it is not accepted in our communities.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for his answer. I appreciate his efforts on this. I think as the Minister responsible for Youth, we do need to do a great deal of youth outreach, moving forward, in the territory to combat some of these very high statistics we have in the North for violence, addictions, and also to make vulnerable communities feel safe. Could the Minister commit to spending some of his time as Minister responsible for Youth to address this with a strategy or an action plan or some form of tangible measure? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Moving forward in this area, the government can only do so much with the resources we have. That is why we have developed partnerships. Any action plans, any work that we do, we always make sure our stakeholders, NGOs, businesses, youth centres get involved and give us information that we can take into consideration. With the safe and caring schools area, that is a new act. Like much things, it can always be revised and looked at how we can make it better and improved better. But I encourage that we do put some of those things into the safe school plans moving forward.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, follow-up to my Member’s statement, I have a few questions for the Minister of Transportation. Mr. Speaker, as I have said many times in this House, the community of Aklavik is looking forward to possible economic opportunities and tourism once the bridge and road is completed to Willow River. Mr. Speaker, at Willow River, we also have in my riding probably the best quality of material that is next to pretty much the same as Frog Creek. Mr. Speaker, the community is looking forward to completing this project, and as I mentioned, we need the remaining funds. I would like to ask the Minister, will the Minister ensure that the community of Aklavik receives adequate funds to complete the last stage to install the bridge at Willow River? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Transportation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Transportation is reviewing the recent proposal from the hamlet of Aklavik, which was done up by some consultants for them, to finish up the bridge span on Willow River to access the granular the Member is talking about. The department is anticipating a large number of applicants for this small amount of money that we have. We anticipate it exceeding by $500,000 again probably this year. We are reviewing the community of Aklavik’s proposal, and we will be getting back to the Member as soon as we can. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I realize the Minister is anticipating a large volume of applications. I was told last week we were first in line, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister: when does the Minister expect our proposal for Willow River to be approved? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Laughter
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I have said to the Member and to the House, we will be reviewing it and getting back to the Member shortly. The scope of this project, though, is well beyond the capacity of the CAP program. This $1-million funding that we have for all the communities in the Northwest Territories is a limited pot of money where a number of communities access for seasonal employment and opportunities for their communities. The Hamlet of Aklavik has asked a significant ask on this program. We will review it and get back to him as soon as we can. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, as the Minister is well aware, this pot of funding, the Community Access Program, is underfunded. Mr. Speaker, we need to increase this as many of the smaller communities depend on this funding to create employment in our small communities, which have less than 35 per cent employment rate. Mr. Speaker, maybe the Minister could work with the Minister of Finance, Aklavik is the Minister’s home community, to find extra funding for Aklavik. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Laughter
I want to thank the Member for that because this is one of the reasons that this Assembly has gone into what we have done to see what we do with our budgets to increase funding for this type of stuff for small communities and create employment for the Northwest Territories.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, we are so close to completing this project. With a little extra help from the ministry, I could see us completing this project this winter. Will the Minister ensure that the community is approved before the winter months come up because, as I mentioned, we have a lot of preparation to prepare for our January to April? That is the small timeframe we have to complete this work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Like I said, we will review it and get back to the Member as quickly as we can. The other thing is the Member has already invited me to tour his region. I look forward to going out to site and having a look at this road and Willow River and everything else this entails.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister of Human Resources. Earlier today he said that we must ensure our youth get the education experience they need to become the NWT’s next generation of leaders. My questions are on the summer student hiring. I brought this up earlier during the main estimates. I didn’t quite have all the numbers in front of me, but I have the numbers now. Hay River regional centre, our population is about 50 per cent higher than that of Fort Smith; yet Smith hires about 50 per cent more summer students, 43 in Smith compared to 29 in Hay River. Similarly, Inuvik, where Hay River is about one-sixth larger than Inuvik, but they hire about a third more summer students. The first question I have is what role does the Department of Human Resources have in hiring summer students? Is it just encouragement? Do they just encourage other departments to hire? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Human Resources.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the hiring decisions for summer students, as with all positions, actually lies with the department. With respect to summer student hiring, the role for the Department of Human Resources is to facilitate the database. We actually facilitate the database, make it available to students, encourage students to get registered. When a department indicates that they have a desire for some summer students, they will let us know the skill set they’re looking for, we search our database, we provide those resumes to the individual departments so that they can actually do the hire based on their needs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Minister’s been doing a great job of keeping us updated, weekly updates as to how many summer students have been hired, where they’ve been hired. I know that there was an article on CBC the other day that said his department does encourage other departments to hire summer students, and they try to encourage departments to exceed last year’s hiring. I was wondering with these stats and with this encouragement that they give, do they do anything with those statistics? Do they look at areas there there’s deficiencies in places like Hay River where we have a low percentage of hires? Do they try and address those deficiencies? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the encouragement actually came from the Premier who asked the departments to do everything they could to try to attain last year’s numbers. Ultimately, the hires are the responsibilities of the individual departments. If we do get resumes of individuals with particular skill sets, we will forward to the department if they match the type of work that the department is doing. We’re trying to get the information out there, let the departments know who’s out there, know who’s working, who wants to work for the Government of the Northwest Territories. I do have to remind the Member, as all Members, we want to hire as many as we can, but it has to be for meaningful work. We can’t just create jobs if there’s nothing to do. The departments have to come up with the funding to cover many of these jobs. We do provide some offsets, some top-up money to the departments to help hire summer students through the Progressive Experience Program or the Relevant Experience Program. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s the individual departments that are responsible. As far as the lower numbers in Hay River, the Member did raise that in Committee of the Whole. I’m trying to get verification on why that might be. We believe part of it might be the fact that the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority is outside of the public service, so it doesn’t always show those numbers, and we don’t participate in the summer student hiring program for Hay River. I’m trying to get some verification on that. When I get that data, I’ll certainly provide it to the Member.
I’m sorry for misspeaking; I guess it was the Premier who gave that encouragement. The numbers I quoted do include the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority. The Minister was saying that the departments tell them what skills they need and they try to have some meaningful work these summer students. Does the department do any work with the other departments to help create meaningful work, to develop some sort of plan so that say, the Department of Transportation, can create a meaningful position to hire a summer student?
Exactly one of the reasons that we created the Progressive Experience Program: it does provide some additional money to departments so that they have some resources to actually hire somebody in a progressive experience situation. They would hire somebody who comes in with particular education, that matches a particular activity the department is trying to do, and then they would rehire the student again and again and again, allowing them to build experience as they move through their education. These are the dollars that we’re making available to try to encourage some of the departments to pursue more students and commit to some of these students in a longer term.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know I’ve brought this up a couple of times, and it’s because people in town bring it up to me; they want their children to get these jobs and stay in the North and be encouraged to come back to the North. It’s something that I’ll be bringing up again and I’ll be looking forward to working with I guess the Ministers of all the departments, since they’re responsible for the hiring, to try and up those numbers in Hay River. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. I take that as a comment. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have some follow-up questions about the process. In my Member’s statement I explained the process of how I understand negotiated contracts. I was also informed each request to negotiate is carefully considered by department and Minister and results in a decision to proceed with seeking Cabinet approval to negotiate or, in some of the instances, decision to proceed with tendering. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell the House if Cabinet or the department decided not to go to a negotiated contract for the contract in Highway No. 7? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Transportation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In that particular contract, the decision was mine and mine alone not to bring into Cabinet. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I guess I’m quite disappointed in hearing that answer, and I’ll deal with some other questions later on. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister please provide the rationale. Why did he and his department decided against this proposal?
The reason that I made that decision is based on a negotiated contract policy, and there’s things in there that I base my decision on and that’s what I did.
It looks like I’m going to have a set of questions tomorrow for the Minister on this as well. In the letter and the correspondence I received from the Premier and the Minister they talked about the companies being on a level playing field. However, Mr. Speaker, the economic reality in the NWT is contractors are not on the same playing field with contractors who come from outside of the NWT. Mr. Speaker, is the Minister aware of any barriers facing companies from the North bidding on work in BC? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As far as I know, I don’t believe there’s any barriers for any northern company to bid on any southern work.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I understand the Minister may not be aware of barriers, as I recently was informed that there are some barriers. Mr. Speaker, if an NWT company is successful in getting work in BC they are required to pay PST on all their equipment moved into BC, plus they need to file multi-financial statements and related documents. On top of that, they have to purchase various permits. This adds up to thousands of dollars to the cost of the contract. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister have his department look into implementing similar for the NWT so we are on a level playing field? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As we have GST and they have GST and PST, and probably some other taxes that’s relevant to all contractors bidding on work probably in British Columbia. As far as contractors coming north and us, we all have the same contracts stuff we have to abide by. We’ve got to have workers’ compensation, you’ve got to have your permits in place, and pay GST and the payroll tax and all those number of things. There should be no impediment, any difference back and forth.
