Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. During my Member's statement, I referenced additional funding that was earmarked in the fall 2020 federal economic statement. I am wondering how much of the $181.5 million in additional funding for arts and heritage does the Minister intend to request from the federal government, and does the anticipated NWT Arts Strategy support this request? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. None and no. The reason for those answers is because we have been informed by the federal government that this money is not flowing to governments. It's not flowing to provincial or territorial governments. It will be distributed through the Canada Council for the Arts. What that means is that there are a limited number of organizations in the territory that will actually be able to access this funding. We have a lot of artists in the territory who are just individuals. It might be someone making slippers in their housing and doing beading. Those individuals can't access that funding.
I have had conversations with the federal Minister about this before. During some of the COVID relief funding that rolled out, they did have an application process where individual artists could apply, but that's not the case in this situation. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to request any of this funding. Therefore, we can't, obviously, build it into our Arts Strategy, but we will support artists in the territory in their attempts to access this funding. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That's not fabulous news, because a lot of the extra funding and grants that are available to northern artists do come through and are filtered through our government system. They either come from ITI or they come from the NWT Arts Council through ECE. I am wondering if the Minister can confirm or not if NWT artists would actually be better served by an NWT Arts Council that was independent of ECE.
I think that the Member might be envisioning a different body than what our arts council currently is. Our arts council helps make decisions about how to distribute the funding provided by ECE. I think the Member might be thinking of something like an artists' collective in the territory or something like that. While there is, perhaps, merit to those discussions, that's not really what the arts council is at this point.
If the Minister is wondering if I have big dreams for arts in the Northwest Territories, the answer is yes. I'm wondering if the Minister would be willing to have a conversation with the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment about kind of our disjointed approach to art within the Northwest Territories. We currently have culture and heritage housed under as well as the arts council housed under ECE, and then we have tourism, which has a huge cultural piece to it, and, I believe, a huge untapped market for arts in the Northwest Territories and on the global stage. I'm wondering if the Minister will have a conversation about how to really bring together arts within the GNWT so that we can better support northern artists and give them that stage that they rightfully deserve?
This is a conversation that's been going on for years and years. I think that, from the outside, ultimately, when it comes to programs that support our residents, there should be no lack of service or service disruptions or poor service based on how its distributed among different departments. Ideally, the GNWT should be working together, sort of an integrated service delivery approach, and provide services to residents with a resident focus. How the government does that needs to be coordinated. I think that there's this coordination between ITI and ECE, and it would be difficult to completely separate this file. ITI isn't the type of department that would take over responsibility for the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, for example; and ECE isn't necessarily the type of department who promotes and sells internationally. I think that the approach that we have now is to utilize the expertise in both departments and work together. That being said, I'm always looking for ways to do things better, and I'm happy to have that conversation.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and I look forward to having more conversations about this with the Minister because I think it merits further conversation. My last question I really want to know: does the Minister intend to table the NWT Arts Strategy during this sitting? Thank you.
Based on the questions that I've gotten in the House, the feedback that committee has provided during our main estimates review, both in camera and in public, there's additional work being done on the Arts Strategy. I think it's incumbent upon us when we hear things to incorporate that feedback. We will do that. We will be providing standing committee, both, I believe, Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment and the Standing Committee on Social Development with copies of the draft for additional feedback in the coming weeks and likely will table at the next sitting of this Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
