Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Depending on what you prioritize, you can get a lot done in the next couple years. That being said, there is a lot of work that, like I just mentioned, we want to do in conjunction with this. And that is reviewing the programs that we have, how effective they are, determining if there's better places we could put our money, and one of those things we're going to look at is the arts council and what it could look like in the future. So I'd like to say that we could just get it done, but I also want to make sure that we research it, we look at what's happening in other jurisdictions, and then we do something that's right for the territory given our specific circumstances, because I don't want to create an organization that is set up to fail. I don't want to create an organization that is going to be very costly and not produce results. So we have to do all of this work before just moving ahead with something. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake
Merci, Monsieur le President. Sometimes I don't say enough good things about my colleagues across the floor. So I want to congratulate the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment for increasing income assistance for some of our residents in the floodimpacted communities. I think that was a really good move on the part of his department. But I'd like to know which communities are receiving the topup. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Minister responsible for ECE.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Under the income assistance regulations, the department can issue an emergency allowance to income assistance clients when there is an emergency. And in this instance, there the emergency allowance was issued to income assistance clients in Fort Simpson and zones 1, 2, and 3 in Fort Good Hope. There are no income assistance clients in Jean Marie River, otherwise we would have supported them as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Merci, Monsieur le President. Thanks very much to the Minister for that forwardlooking work by his department. I'm just wondering, were these payments like onetime payments or are they going to be ongoing in some way? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The emergency payments are one time and so they were issued when the emergency occurred, and, you know, if you look at, like somewhere like Aklavik, it's my understanding that there hasn't been flood damage and power outages the way there has been in places like Jean Marie and Fort Simpson, and so the benefits haven't been issued there. But if that were to change, then I'm sure the director of income assistance would issue those benefits accordingly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister again for his response. I know that our colleagues on the other side have made commitments that we're going to get people back into their homes in time before winter, and so what kind of discretion is there recognizing that people some people are probably going to be out of their homes for a number of months. What kind of discretion is there to continue these topup payments over a period of time and what sort of criteria would be used to trigger that action? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So as I stated, they are the onetime emergency payments. So if there is a flood and the power goes out, someone loses all the food in their refrigerator. This is a onetime payment to help them buy food and things like that. So there is no plan to continue these onetime payments. And as for additional flood relief, that is a different department. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Thebacha.
Mr. Speaker, I wasn't going to ask any questions but just listening to some of the comments here today, I'm going to go back to my questions that I asked the Minister of human resources the other day.
Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us if she is aware of the unspoken practice and culture within the human resources wherein hiring staff will brown and blacklist potential applicants and existing employees from advancing within the NWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Thebacha. Minister responsible for Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, no, this is not there is not a blanket practice as what is described by the Member. Mr. Speaker, I this is a human system of 5,000 people strong. It is populated by wonderful people who work across the public service, great people in human resources. Does that mean that every single process and every single time at every single hiring is produces the end result that every person wants it to? Well, the end result is that some people don't get jobs. What we want is to have a process that is clear, transparent, accessible, and that is the purpose of human resources. That's the goal. That's what we are working towards. And as I said earlier, always recognize that continually in human nature, there will be opportunities to do better and to improve the systems that we're in, and it is my intention to oversee that and to see that we achieve that goal. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Thebacha.
Mr. Speaker, you know, listening to the comments in the room, you know, it surprises me that I'm not saying that all human resource staff are negligent. I think we have to look at the superintendents of each region. I think we've got to see where the direction comes from and a direction to go through. So with that, Mr. Speaker, does the Minister recognize that the hiring staff have sometimes been retaliated against certain individuals based on the applicant's or employee's association with certain people whom hiring staff doesn't like or like, know, or like personally? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, there's no place for retaliation in the human resources processes of the in the Government of the Northwest Territories. I believe that my office is very accessible, and I hope that it is. I've had many MLAs reach out to me and individuals who often felt that they wanted to raise a concern that they couldn't raise somewhere else. I hope that that continues. There is no place for retaliation. There's no place for that kind of favoritism. And if there's an opportunity to speak to someone to work through something to identify an issue to confirm if there's been something that's not according to that process and according to these practices, then we will do our best to find that out and to work it through so that it does not have a place in the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I hear the Ministers saying there's accessibility. Accessibility is extremely hard, okay. Sure, the MLAs have accessibility. But what about the poor person on the street? Do they have accessibility to actually say what they actually felt when they went for an interview and is refused again, over and over? Can the Minister tell whether staff incompetence or employee insubordination may be part of the problems relating to broader human issues in the Government of the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I'd like to try to be helpful and not repeat my answers but the simple fact is I'm back to the same response I gave at the beginning, that there are wonderful public servants and good people in human resources doing their very best to make sure that their processes are fair and that they are modern and that they are in keeping with the best practices of human resources processes anywhere else in Canada or the world.
Now, when I say about accessibility, I certainly have heard from individual employees direct to me. I have certainly heard from my own constituents direct to me. And, you know and in each case, if it's a constituency or if it's an MLA matter, what I am able to then do is see that the background and the process that was followed, identify if in fact there's an area where maybe we could do better, be more clear, to offer better information, to offer more, you know, plain language information, if there's more we could do to offer supports with resumé writing, with interview preparation, understanding why, you know, an interview was graded mainly the way it was. All of those are tools, skills, things that we can continue to do on top of which we have and I you know, again, the Indigenous recruitment and retention framework is going to be a very different way of governing the process of human resources in the Government of the Northwest Territories. We have training programs that continually roll out. And in addition to all of that, it's been made plainly obvious to me that, in fact, you know, there's other pinch points that we need to be looking at. That's the job of human resources and headquarters here is to continue to do that and to look again and again at what it is that we have, what it is that we use, what is it that's on offer can we modernize?
Mr. Speaker, that's been I believe been a consistent message I've tried to put forward as the Minister responsible. It's the message I'm going to continue to put forward as the Minister responsible. And in the interim, when there are times when someone feels that the process hasn't been properly applied, I encourage people to reach out to their MLA, to reach out to me, to reach out to their union. That's why we have all of these systems here. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate my question from the other day because I think that we have to keep focused on what we want to make change on within this government. Between 2016 and 2020, there was a total of 303 appeals to human resource hiring decisions; however, only 17 of those appeals were upheld. And all appeals all together were denied in 20192020. Does the Minister believe these statistics are fair and not indicative of broader issues within the appeal process in human resources? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said earlier, I don't necessarily take the view that the appeals process, the number of appeals nor the success of appeals, necessarily gives us a lot of clear information that I can then apply to the staffing process itself. Mr. Speaker, I spent many years working in the criminal justice system where there were often appeals, and they were not always very successful. And it doesn't necessarily tie back to what's happening in the appeal court represents what should be happening at the front end. I don't know that it's much different here. What's happening at the appeals and staffing process doesn't necessarily tell me what I need to fix or change within the hiring processes of the human resources approach. There may well be a better way of running the appeals. There may well be a better opportunity to be more engaging but right now under the appeals process that we have, it's fairly strict. It's fairly narrow. It looks at process. It looks at where the rules follow, those of Collective Agreements, the Affirmative Action Policy applied, and in general, because those are procedural I'm not necessarily surprised that, in fact, the answer is yes, that the procedures are being followed.
Now this is reflected in the Public Service Act as well, so. Mr. Speaker, we're doing what is in the act. We're doing what we have the authority to do. You know, if there's a different philosophical approach to hiring, which is what people I think really the issue to be getting at is there a different approach to hiring. That's when we get into the recruitment and retention framework as one solution. We're only just at the point we're being ready to start to roll that out and to bring it to committee to consider. Will it be the panacea; will it be the end all and be all? Probably not. But it will be a significant new tool that we'll have in the toolbox for human resources.
I have ten more minutes left. Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to not have to continually stand up and talk about human resources. I'm happy to do it. The process is being improved continually, and there's good people there working on it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
I was just very impressed by the capacity of my colleague to keep talking.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of ITI. I'd like to know how is the value of art sales generated through the NWT arts program tracked. For example, are website analogs tracked and reported, and does the NWT Arts Program currently plan to expand to an ecommerce based platform? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Mr. Speaker, you've seen nothing yet in my capacity to speak. Now I get to talk about arts.
Mr. Speaker, with respect to art sales and art sales tracking, so at the moment I can say art sales aren't tracked by the NWT Arts Program in terms of the dollar value per sales or number of sales had. Again, you know, again, this is one where there's a number of individual artists across the Northwest Territories, some in collectives, some selling on their own, some selling, I know, under various social media channel.
And this is not an opportunity, this is not an area where the government is able to track those individual sales through again, certainly not through the arts program. I would say, though, a bit of a plug in terms of generating broadly more sales in the area that there is right now a workshop series being developed for artists to learn about all the different ways that they can be selling their art, whether it's direct to consumer or retailers or online. That is expected to be ready for this summer. So tracking of course is important. But, really, we do recognize that we want to get our numbers up and improve the sales of the incredible arts product we have in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I'm very excited about that program. And I'd like to offer, as a Member of standing committee that will be going into communities, to take any of that information into communities with me and I think that MLAs can be a really good resource to get information out on that.
So I guess I'm wondering, too, does ITI know who the primary markets are for NWT arts and who they're trying to attract to purchase more NWT art and who's already paying attention? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as of the moment well, the arts program does work with partners across Canada. They are working also internationally at this point. There's been showcases of NWT arts products at the WAG, in Edmonton, and internationally at the British Museum. So there's quite a lot happening in the recent couple of years to try to promote and increase awareness of the incredible arts that we have here.
That said, the demographic information that we have is that at this time, a majority of the artwork is still being sold here within the Northwest Territories. I mean, I can look around the room here and see a number of people wearing, whether it's clothing or jewelry or otherwise. So we all know the value of the arts product that is in the Northwest Territories but it is clear that we still need to get that message out more broadly beyond the borders of the territory. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate that and I appreciate the work that is being done by ITI. I do, however, think that ITI needs to understand, and I'm sure that they do, that the cost of web sites is very expensive. And also sometimes technology gets the best of us, Mr. Speaker. And so I think that expanding into an ecommerce type platform for NWT arts brings people together to that site where people are already being brought to, in order to not only showcase artists but then be able to say, 'hey, look at that person and what can I purchase from Tanya Larson that's already on that website?' How can I get there? And so I think that being able to capitalize on people's desire to you know, instant gratification buy right away. I think we're missing out on a big opportunity. And so I'd like to ask the Minister to please explore an ecommerce platform for NWT arts. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, you know, would be remiss not to acknowledge that, of course, the Department of ECE has a shared responsibility over the arts. With respect to ecommerce, I can say that the challenge here one of the challenges here, far apart from the technology alone, is, of course, then are we at risk of displacing those who may not wish to be part of the GNWT process? Would we be at risk where we are creating a situation where we're influencing or, you know, creating a market place that isn't fully fair and accessible to all? So there are some challenges in an online platform that is administered or run by the government. I think part of the bigger challenge, is it the role of government to create the market, to create the economy, or is it the role of government to enable and facilitate that kind of work happening within the arts community in the Northwest Territories. So I know when there's questions earlier about an arts council, I'm obviously paying attention keenly as well. ECE may be the lead but, again, we're taking a wholeofgovernment view here. We're going to certainly all be conscious and be aware of what work we can do together to support the arts community so that they can get their products out there, whether it's through a governmentenabled website or through their own methodologies. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I think that there's some great precedent already within ITI. We have the fur program which works quite well and has been very successful. My last question for the Minister, then, is would the Minister of ITI, given that they do have the film commission and they do have support for entrepreneurs of the arts, would they support an independent arm's length council? Thank you.
Well, so, again, Mr. Speaker, this is an the area of the arts, it's an area with joint responsibility between ECE and ITI. So it's not a simple question that I have the opportunity to say yes or no to. It's a question to which there needs to be discussion between us, between the two departments, as well as with the various councils and commissions that already exist. The arts program, the film commission for example. You know, and determining what it is that the community would benefit most from. I can say I've had inquiries to my office under ITI from members of the arts community in this regard so there certainly seems to be some buzz happening within the community around better and new ways to organize and to promote the arts in the Northwest Territories. And I'm sure that we will continue to have those conversations internally as well as with the external partners. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about night shelters for homeless, and I'd like to I guess ask the Minister of Housing and the Minister responsible for Homelessness is that in Hay River, we had a shelter this last winter, but as of March 31st, it's no longer operational. And so I'd ask the Minister if her department has been in discussions with anyone in Hay River to deliver that service for this coming winter because, you know, we might be in spring but winter's going to be here fairly soon. So I just want to get ahead of the game here. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Minister responsible for Homelessness.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Housing Corporation provides the homelessness initiatives during the winter months. I'm not too sure of the date that the shelter would be open again in the fall. I will have to get back to the Member with that specific date. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The shelter was funded by Housing last winter. So I ask the Minister is there ongoing funding, is there funding that's earmarked for shelter for Hay River for this year, or is it or are you looking for a proposal to make it happen? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At the beginning of this Assembly, there was a lot of, you know, concern about Hay River and looking at what we had experienced during COVID19 and recognizing the most vulnerable at the ground level. There was a lot of advocacy from Hay River to establish a homeless shelter. So with that, we ended up working with one of the nonprofit organizations and opened up a homeless shelter in Hay River. Just to answer the question, yes, we will be continuing those efforts. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's a number of federal government units, I think that are becoming available or that are available in Hay River, and I ask the Minister if she's willing to look at those units and possibly securing one and you know, with four bedrooms at least, and making that available to a nonprofit group to provide shelter this winter. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With the efforts with the RCMP units that we are currently constructing and the agreement that we do have, the RCMP units are issued to be completed next year but we do have a delivery throughout the Northwest Territories, and there is questions about what are they going to be doing with the federal units that are available in the specific communities. So the Housing Corporation has been in contact with the federal government as well in looking at future programming that we can offer at the community level and recognizing that that we do have nonprofit organizations in Hay River. This is a key for us, for the Housing Corporation that we would be able to work in partnership with this organization and hopefully be able to establish specific programming that we would be able to work with those work with those individuals as well.
But not only that, I also wanted to recognize that we do have other outreach as well, too, in looking at food delivery that is in the community. Like, I'm not too sure about that specific, but we're trying to work in conjunction in the community of Hay River to making sure that we do acknowledge and work with the homeless population. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd ask the Minister, you know, to be proactive in this, and maybe her department is, and, you know, have somebody from, you know, her district office reach out to the Department of Health, people there, like, the Hay River health centre, and some of the other groups and the mayor, I guess, and, you know, it has to be a meeting that has to take place to talk about this issue, and, you know, and to come to some resolve here before winter. So, you know, everybody talks about it but nobody makes the first move, and, you know, I've been trying to put the bug in everybody's ear to make this happen. So I'm hoping that the department can maybe, you know, take a lead on it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, that bug is in my ear. And I have been working with departments as well too and I will keep the Member informed as we go forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
