Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I'd like to continue the conversation started earlier this week in regards to child and youth mental wellness.
The Health and Social Services has a child and youth mental wellness plan in which objective 3 states: Provide training for all NWT school principals, program support teachers, junior kindergarten to 12 educators, and classroom support assistants in traumainformed and culturally respectful practices. I'm wondering if this training has been developed. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible Education, Culture, and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, in response to the child and youth mental wellness action plan, such training has been developed, both traumainformed classroom training and culturally sensitive classroom training. It is not mandatory for all NWT educators, but it is available upon request and it's free to education bodies, and there has been significant uptake on those programs. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm wondering if the Minister can define "significant uptake" and if the Minister is willing to work with school boards to mandate this training for educators who work in the territory. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Unfortunately, I don't have the numbers in front of me, and it's not it's not as easy as just mandating training for educators. As I think we've learned over this Assembly, there's a strong separation of authorities between education bodies and the department. That being said, we always encourage training; we provide extensive training; we work with the NWTTA to ensure that their members are aware that the training is available. And as we go forward in modernizing the Education Act, this is definitely an area where we want to look at to ensure that all teachers receive the appropriate training. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate the Minister parking putting that in the parking lot for the Education Act, because I think it's really important. If it's important for our public servants and our frontline staff to be educated about the history of the Northwest Territories and working in a traumainformed way, then it's equally as important for educators to be doing the same.
In addition, Mr. Speaker, 2SLGBTQQIA awareness and training and in creating inclusive classrooms saves lives. So will ECE also mandate the 2SLGBTQQIA awareness and training for NWT educators as part of that conversation? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And again, I can't really mandate glad things but we do do our best to develop the resources and provide the resources, promote the resources at no cost to educators. So the LGBTQ2S+ equity, safety, and inclusion guidelines training is available upon request from ECE. In addition, we have safe school regulations that mandate that all 49 schools in the territory provide a safe school plan which includes identifying LGBTQ2S+ resource people in the school and gender sexuality advisors. ECE works with local partners to put on the triannual rainbow youth conference. Unfortunately, the last one was scheduled for April of 2020. It was fully planned and ready to go but obviously that did not happen for reasons we're all too familiar with. And so we do work to develop and promote this training and provide this training at every opportunity. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that there are a lot of expectations on all of us right now, especially educators and mandating something like that, through maybe a ministerial directive, can be a tall ask sometimes. But when the when the repercussions of not doing it are far too great, when the repercussions of not using informed language are far too great, sometimes making that extra step to mandate something is worth it and is important.
Even here in the Assembly, as busy as all of us are, especially our ministerial colleagues, we took the time together to do a blanket exercise. And while all of us in this room are aware of the history of the Northwest Territories, the act of going through that was incredibly powerful as a group. And so would the Minister consider putting together a ministerial directive in order to mandate training like this for the Northwest Territories to better serve the children of the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Being the Minister of Education is all about relationships. We have to work with the teachers; we have to work with all of the education bodies across the territory. And I think that we have a good relationship with both of those entities and, as a result, we're able to make things happen without having to mandate them.
I think there is desire among all educators to have this training. That's why there has been uptake on this training. The local school boards see the value in this training, and so that's why it happens as well. So I don't think this is a situation that requires a mandate. I think that much of the work that the Member is talking about is actually happening. So I want to give her that assurance. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Oral questions. Member for Great Slave.
