Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on my Member's statement, supporting for the small communities. As a new Member to this Assembly I have come to realize the physical challenges of government, and more importantly the positive contributions made through program delivery, in particular the Small Community Employment Support Program. My first question to the Minister of ECE is: can the Minister highlight some positive points created by this Small Community Employment Support Program? Mahsi.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do appreciate the work that the rural and remote community has been doing since it got together and started working with the Regular Members and Ministers of Cabinet. As well as the increase of the $3 million in the 2017-2018 operations budget, I can let the Member know, and I did make a statement earlier in the session that, from April 1, 2017, to December 31, 2017, we had created over 400 jobs in every region in the Northwest Territories. I have not got the updated stats from this year, from January 1st to present, but I am sure that it has increased as well in terms of creating employment, creating jobs, creating projects in the communities. Once that report is finalized at the end of this fiscal year, I will be more than happy to share it with Members. Also coming from that is we are creating a small community employment support strategy, the first of its kind for this government, that is going to be focusing on increasing training as well as employment in our smallest communities. So there are a few highlights, and I think it's just the beginning. As we move forward into the next fiscal year, we are going to see an increase. The information is out there. We have organizations. We have committees that do know that there is an increase in the small community fund and that they can access it, so I think we'll start seeing more improvements to our small communities in the next fiscal year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thanks to the Minister for that information. I am glad to hear that it's moving in the direction that it's intended for. My next question: will the Minister confirm if there are other accessible resources available to increase the Small Community Employment Program, a consolidation of various programs moving toward that same direction?
One other thing that I want to highlight is that, out of that $4.2 million that we budgeted in the last budget, up to the present we have almost spent all of that money, and I am confident that we will have all of that funding in the Small Community Employment Fund spent by the end of this fiscal year. Of course, we want to look at other ways that we can partner with whether it's another organization, possibly through a wage subsidy or partnering in share costs for projects, as well as looking at some of the other programs that are in other departments on how we can work together so that we can access other department funding for projects while utilizing the Small Community Employment Fund to increase training as well as increase employment in our small communities. So that will be all highlighted and discussed as we develop this Small Community Employment Strategy, which we are hoping to release later this spring.
My next question: are there federal sources of funding available to match dollar for dollar for this program?
As I mentioned, once this report comes out we'll see how some of our dollars have been spent and whether or not we've had organizations or communities that have accessed federal dollar spending. We do have unique ways of how we partner within our departments, but that is something we'll have to take a look at. I know, because there was such an influx of the $3 million on top of the $1.2, we want to make sure those funds were spent, that we did create employment, that we created jobs in the communities, developed projects in the communities, and I want to see how that report looks. Moving forward, that is something we can use to possibly leverage other funding, whether it's territorially or federally.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My last question: as I look forward, it seems that we are depleting our resources here for our territorial physical position here. That's why I mention in there the federal sources. In the report coming this spring, will the Minister include qualifying federal sources in the report? Mahsi.
As I have mentioned to Members, as we are going through our main estimates, we also have the labour market development agreements that we do have with the Government of Canada. There are funds in that agreement that we do have with the federal government that will also help with employment, so there are some dollars that we are accessing on a bilateral basis, as well, and we are just looking at hopefully signing that agreement soon. We'll get all that information to the Member and to Members as we move forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.
