Thank you, Mr. Speaker. These questions are for the Minister of education. Can the Minister tell me what his department's plan or approach is to getting those who are very capable but not willing to work off the couch and into the workforce using the tools at his disposal? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The NWT has the highest employment rate, the lowest unemployment rate in Canada, but it's not evenly distributed. We have communities where everyone who wants to work is working. Then you have small communities where there're people who might want to work, but there're no jobs. Over half our small communities have less than 50 percent employment. We have a number of different problems. In regards to the people who don't want to get off the couch, that's a tough one. How do you motivate them? I think the best way to start is to start young. ECE's doing a number of things, including career and education advisors, to help young people figure out what they want to do with their lives, show them what opportunities are available, what education they will need to get there, and all of that. I think that is going to be a boom to our labour market in the coming years. There are a number of different things that we're doing. The Member provided his questions to me earlier, and I think that I will be able to provide more of those comments as he asks them. Thank you.
What concerns me is that, if we cannot motivate those NWT residents not willing to work, then this government, along with business, are forced to recruit from not only outside the NWT, but outside Canada. Can the Minister confirm what labour shortages exist in the NWT and how we expect to encourage Northerners to fill them?
I always remember when I was a relatively new MLA and the Premier stood up at that time and said there's more jobs than people to fill them in the territory. I never really thought about it that way, but that really is the truth. That's why we bring in thousands of people a year to do work. What we really need to do is ensure that our northern residents are trained to get those jobs. We might still need people from the South. We likely will, but that's okay as long as we're keeping money in the North and northern people are working.
In 2015, ECE completed with the Conference Board of Canada a labour market forecast, and at that time, it was forecasted that between 2015 and 2030, there would be 28,500 job openings in the Northwest Territories. We're doing the work now to update that to 2035. Interestingly enough, we're also looking at doing the work that we already did but also focusing on new and emerging economies, things like infrastructure projects, housing construction projects, tourism and knowledge economy, and mining and remediation. They fit in nicely with things like the earth resources specialization, the new polytechnic. There's a big labour shortage. We know we need tradespeople. I could stand up here for hours talking about all the needs we have. We need teachers. We bring in hundreds of teachers every year from the South. You're not going to get an argument from me that there's a labour shortage.
Employers are frustrated. They try and employ Northerners, but most are working. Some of those who are capable and available refuse to work. What, if any, incentives, does the Minister's department have to encourage people to get out and take a job?
There is a number of things the GNWT as a whole does. Supplementing wages is one thing so that employees can be paid a higher wage, things like our wage top-up program. We also have a wage subsidy program through ECE that supports employers who hire people who might need training. We help those kinds of people who need the training who maybe don't have the opportunities to get the big jobs yet. We are developing a polytechnic university in order to help train people to get the jobs they want. The plan is to make it as easy and accessible for people to get educated and get trained as we can. We have a small community employment program where we hand out millions of dollars every year to communities and businesses to create jobs in communities. There's a number of things that we're doing. I wish there was a silver bullet to address this issue, but there's not. We are casting a wide net.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Don't get me wrong. Not all people who are unemployed are lazy. Some just need a chance. I also expect some need to be challenged as they must possess skills that they can survive off of little government support they receive or funds they receive from their parents. I would ask the Minister if there's any way we can have those capable people provide community service or work with employers in return for the monetary compensation they receive so they can acquire skills and possibly find out what interests them and hopefully move forward with their life. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We do have, like I mentioned, the small community employment program, which does just that. It puts money into communities to create jobs. I will also note that this is one of the reasons that I wanted to have a look and review of the Income Assistance program. The Member mentioned a few times that maybe it's easier to just not work than to work, and then perhaps, that's keeping people on the couch, so to say. Is there a way that we can use those programs to help people get passed that point, get over the welfare wall, as they say? That's something else that we're doing. Again, there's a number of wage subsidy programs. We have our Skill 4 Success initiative, which is focusing on increasing the number of people in trades, and there are programs in there that help pair employers with apprentices and get people into those programs. Basically, what the Member is asking is: what does ECE do? Everything we do is to try to get people employed, get them into the regular market. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Thebacha.
