Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate that there is a lot of work to do, and the Minister seems more than willing to have conversations and, you know, find solutions to those exceptions.
I guess I'm hearing from multiple organizations they're getting some conflicting information; they're still not quite sure how much money they will actually get and how it relates to potential fee increases. Some were told on March 24th that if the fee increase happened before end of fiscal before April 1st, that then that it wouldn't they would not be denied and then later they were told no, no, that 2.3 percent increase still applies.
So I guess I'm looking for clarification from the Minister on is there some sort of deadline of when we're looking backwards at the fee increases and if the day homes or childcare providers are told that if they did it before April 1st, it wasn't going to affect the subsidy, can we honour that commitment? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There have been meetings with all the childcare providers, and they have opportunities to ask those questions. You know, these discussions that we're having are great opportunities for us to find out exactly what the issues are and zero in on those.
And so as, you know, the MLAs have brought additional questions and concerns to me, I bring those to the department, and, in turn, the department then brings finds ways to answer those for the programs.
So the best thing to do for a program is to sit down with their early childhood consultant and go over those numbers. And it's not a simple process to determine what, you know, they will be getting. So there is some work that needs to be done, and I know that everyone or people often want an answer right now, but there's a bit of work to happen, especially given the magnitude of this undertaking. But I encourage everyone to have those conversations with the early childhood consultants. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment as the Minister responsible for the nominee program.
The Yukon government set up a dedicated Ukrainian family support desk just recently. It provides information on federal programs to assist with immigration and family reunification, connects employers who would offer employment to Ukrainians arriving in the Yukon, and guides Ukrainians looking for employment opportunities in the Yukon.
Is the Minister willing to set up a similar proactive service supporting immigration efforts to the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So we have a service desk already. It is not specific to Ukraine, but it can handle the calls and the requests for information. So anyone who wants to contact them by email can contact @email or by phone at 18554405450. Thank you.
Thank you very much Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, given the success of the Atlantic, Yukon, and Manitoba pilot programs, is the Minister willing to work with the federal government to establish an NWT pilot program for immigration that allows for labour market assessment exemptions? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And those conversations have begun. I will say that that the pandemic has done a couple things. It has really shifted the focus from immigration because no one was coming in for a couple years. So there was very limited thought about travel. But it also highlighted the labour shortages that we have here in the territory. And I think it's actually refocused us now on the need to improve our immigration services and increase the number of people settling in the territory, bringing their services here.
And so we are looking at making some changes. The program that the Member is referencing is it was years in the making. It is a substantial amount of effort and time to create such a program. And I would love to say, yeah, we're going to do that, but it's going to take years of work with the federal government to do something like that. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that things take time, but I think we also have the benefit of the fact that we're not trying to reinvent the wheel, that the Yukon really has already established a program that works well in the North and that it is something that the NWT could potentially take and change to suit the needs of the Northwest Territories and what Northerners here in the NWT want to see. So I hope that the government will continue taking the steps to move that forward.
Mr. Speaker, my next question is given the vital role of that immigration has played in economic recovery of other jurisdictions, will the Minister establish an immigration advisory council cochaired by the Minister himself so that the GNWT can work both with local businesses and those with lived experience in immigration to help improve our immigration processes and also supports for people going through that process so that we can proactively work to increase our population size? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And just to be clear about my previous answer, the federal government will make it take years for us to get the program that the Member's talking about. They have processes in place that they take immigration very seriously, and they have a very robust process that does take time. So even to we can't just transplant a program from the Yukon. There is a lot involved.
In terms of an immigration advisory council, we're not looking to establish something like that at this time; however, I understand what the Member is getting at. And right now, ECE and ITI are going out and proactively reaching out to to businesses and people who are familiar with the Nominee program to find out what we can do to improve the program.
So some of that work is beginning, and we'll see what comes of that. Perhaps there is some sort of a formalized body down the road that can then help us focus our efforts, but that's not what something we're looking to establish right now. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I hope that the work being done with engagement on the Nominee program will one day lead to just a really long series of yeses for me for the Minister in this House.
My last question actually relates to an answer that was given by the Minister of Health and Social Services earlier today about trying to work with people coming from the for example, the Ukraine in order to access additional health care workers. And similar to that, other jurisdictions have set up MOUs. And a great example is Manitoba has set up an MOU with the Philippines in regards to internationally educated nurses and facilitating that process.
And so I'm wondering if there is an intent with ECE working in conjunction with potentially Health and Social Services to set up MOUs with different countries in order for us to increase our health care workers here in the territory. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We're not looking to do something like that right now; however, I will say that I have been involved in meetings with all of the ministers of education from across Canada, and we talk about these exact type of things. So I definitely see the value in it.
And I think that as a government, we have to choose what our focuses are, and we can't do everything. We don't invest as much money in immigration as places like the Yukon do. I'm not sure what their budget is, but I know that it is more, and they have more employers, and they can put more emphasis on this.
And so in the coming years, we're going to have to decide is our labour shortage worthy of having investments in areas like immigration, and if so, then we can perhaps make the program a bit more robust and do a bit more of these initiatives that the Member is speaking of. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.
(Audio)
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I guess just further to my series of questions, I know that that we're you know, potentially the GNWT is not currently looking into different ways to access immigration, and I understand that there are a lot of different pulls within the government. But one of the things that is very clear is that increasing our population size is the biggest way to increase our revenue source here in the territory. It's it's one of the easiest ways to increase our revenue source.
And so having people working at increasing our our population size off the side of our of their desk maybe is not the most effective way to go about it. And so further to looking at the Nominee program through community engagement, what other ways is the GNWT working at not just immigration but population growth here in the territory?
And I guess my question maybe I don't know if direct that at ECE or the Premier. But I think that this is a very important topic and one that requires a little bit more conversation. Thank you.
Minister responsible for ECE.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know the Member said that she wasn't quite sure who to direct it to. So I appreciate you putting that confidence in me that I could answer the question.
ECE is not a lead on any sort of a population growth strategy; however, we do lead the labour file and recognize there is a significant need for labour in the territory. It really is holding back a number of industries and holding us back from providing the level of service that we want. So there is a lot of effort going into this from the HR standpoint, and I know health is doing work in terms of HR. We are looking at how we can attract more people from outside of Canada to the territory.
And we've been doing that every year. Our numbers have been going up. We made significant gains. So I don't want to say that nothing is happening. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when we look at the population growth numbers for the territory, we're not a territory that's growing. I know that the Yukon and both Nunavut have seen growth in their territorial population numbers. Here in the NWT, we have not seen the same success.
And while I understand that there are there is work, sorry, going on within Health for recruitment, I laid out four different suggestions today as to how we can be very proactive as far as increasing our labour pool, increasing our population here in the territory. And I while I understand that we have a very broad spectrum of expectation on what our government does, increasing our revenue source needs to be one of them.
And so if if all of the answers I got today generally was we're not really looking at that right now, then then where do we go from here as far as proactively growing our territory? Because we need a growth strategy. We need a higher revenue source, and we need a higher population in order to get that. So what are the next steps? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I agree, we need to grow our population. We need to increase the number of qualified professionals we have here in the territory. And that is why myself and the Minister of ITI have spoken about the immigration file and how we can better combine our efforts. And perhaps that is looking at amalgamating our resources and using them more efficiently. But there is I can assure the Member that while I can't just say yes to everything that she asked, I can say that this is a we do have a renewed focus on this, and we are moving in the direction that the Member would like to see us move.
Unfortunately, we have 22 priorities here. Immigration was not chosen by this Assembly as a priority, or population growth. So that has resulted in our focus perhaps being on some of the other some of the other areas that you know, especially me as the Minister of ECE have had to focus on. Thank you.
Yes, thank you very much for that, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister for that response. It's one that I'll continue to come back on because although we have 22 priorities, we also have to pay for them. So we have to look at different revenue sources, and people are definitely our greatest resource, and the North is an excellent place to come and set down some roots. So thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So maybe a warning to the next Assembly: Don't ask for 22 different things if you don't have a plan to pay for them, because I agree, we need to focus our priorities; we need to ensure that we can pay for what we want.
All of you know, I often hear that we want more of this, we want more of this, more of this. But on the rare occasion, we do hear some suggestions on how we can increase our funds, our revenues. But for the most part, we hear, more, more, more.
So I thank the Member for raising this issue that we do need to to raise our revenue, do need to put a greater focus on our economy, on our population, and on our labour force. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for oral questions. Member for Monfwi.
Okay, mahsi. Can you guys hear me? Okay. Mr. Speaker [Translation] speak about caribou about caribou. The funding for caribou has been it's not as much as it was. And we also know that caribou has been declined, but then we also know a lot of information about why is it the way it is, and and with funding with funding that is not as much as it used used to be to do a research, doing caribou declining, they say.
I'd like to know the answer, and I'd like to have that answer so the [Translation Unavailable].
Thank you, Member for Monfwi. Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources.
Hopefully I get the I got the message here. So to be clear, there has been no reduction in the survey. What happened in 2020, we had money in the budget to do the survey for the caribou, and then COVID hit. So then we've been playing catch up. The money that was here that we had in the budget for this year is going into the next years' budgets. We do the survey every two years. So we do the research. We work we bring in some of our Indigenous partners to go travelling with us as part of our survey group. So we do the survey.
The money was spent last year. The results are in this year. And so we have the survey done. So we haven't reduced it. It's just that the budget has been moving from year to year because of 2020. So it used to be every second year. Now we're back to '21. So the next one is 2023. So the money will be in the budget for that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Member for Monfwi, just so you know, there's going to be issues if you're going back and forth. As mentioned earlier, we're having issues with the translation. So I know the Minister well, a lot of us didn't hear everything that you just said, but just so you know that. Thank you. Member for Monfwi.
Okay, thank you. Okay, well, that was good. Thank you for the information for the to the Minister just provided.
Okay, so that was from last year, and then this year it's different budget. So budget increases have been made to enforcement. And he just said he mentioned some there already.
So can the Minister explain the reason for reducing the budget for scientific research while increasing the budget for enforcement? This is for the enforcement. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we didn't reduce the scientific research funding. It was in 2020, we were doing the research; COVID hit; we weren't able to do the research. So we did it in 2021. So we moved that money from 2020 to 2021. In 2022, the money will be moved to 2023 because every second year, we will do the research on that.
As for the enforcement, all it is is that we've been asked by the Indigenous governments to add an additional camp, which we've done. We now have three camps there, so. And 24/7 to have staff there. So the Indigenous governments have asked us to make sure we have enforcement out there, and we are working with our Indigenous governments to meet the needs to make sure that we follow through on making sure people don't hunt the caribou in the mobile zone. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, based on what many elders and harvester have seen with their own eyes, they feel there is a lot more than 6,200 caribou. Can the Minister explain how herds are counted? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, for that detail, I would have asked the Member to give the question to me earlier, but I can try to explain it the best we can. So we do have and I believe there was a technical briefing provided by the Wek’eezhii Water and Resources Board with our staff. It committee, which was made public.
So we do have airlines or we charter aircrafts that we survey it. There's a longitudes and latitude checked. They check on the the the herd, the calves, and the cows and that in the Bathurst area. And that's how it's corrected or calculated.
So there is a map, and it's showed. If the Member wishes to see the map again or another briefing, I'm more than willing to get the staff to meet with her to provide further detail. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Monfwi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when the Minister's staff confiscate caribou from harvester and later on later those charges are dropped or are unproven in court, can the Minister commit to providing an apology and financial compensations to those harvester? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can't make that commitment. There's a process. There's a legal process. Once that process is done, then we can look at each matter moving forward. But right now, we have a process. We need to follow it. We're going through the justice system. And we ensure the meat's not wasted. It's given to other Indigenous governments so that the meat is not being wasted there.
I need to really stress, though, folks, is the herd size is 6,240. That's 1 percent of 1986. So in 1986, we had a huge population. Now we're at 1 percent, 6,240 caribou as from our survey. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Minister of Inuvik Twin Lakes.
(Audio)
Oral questions. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to make an attempt to ask the questions that I think my colleague from Inuvik Twin Lakes may be wanting to ask.
On Monday, the Minister of Infrastructure spoke about delays to the Inuvik airport expansion. It's my understanding that that those delays are partly due to a cost overrun of $40 million.
Can the Minister speak to whether or not the GNWT will be on the hook to pay the cost overruns, or will the DND pay for that given that it is a hundred percent dollars for this project? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Great Slave. Minister responsible for Infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it's very early to tell at this time. Work we are working with Canada to substantiate the costs and that they have to go through their own process, which means going through a treasury board to be able to secure additional funding. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't think I need to tell the Minister that we really can't afford $40 million that we did not have budgeted for this work.
Given that there is such an urge at this moment with arctic sovereignty and the key role that the that Inuvik plays in that, can the Minister tell me whether or not it seems favourable that the Government of Canada will accept these costs and if and not only that, actually provide further funding for expansion in Inuvik? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is right, the the work packages have come in significantly over budget, more than the GNWT estimates and more than the thirdparty estimate that was developed using some information that was collected from regional contractors. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess, Mr. Speaker, can the Minister speak a little bit to the fact that this project hasn't been underway for that long and given that it really only got started in the last year, how did we get to $40 million in cost overruns without this being flagged prior to now? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when the national defence announced in September 2019 that the federal government would provide the GNWT with $150 million over five years, you know, given some of the circumstances that's happening right now, it has exceeded the proposed budget. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't think that answered my question. There clearly needs to be a look at investigating how this project got so far over scope or out of budget before it ever was flagged. We should not be at a point where a project is at $40 million over budget without it raising alarm bells long before that.
I guess my last question, though, is around will we actually save this construction season? Is there a push regardless of who's paying for it to get the trench that my colleague was mentioning on Monday or the critical work that needs to be completed this season is there a push and a will from that department to get it done regardless of whether the feds are paying for it or not? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I understand that there was a productive meeting held this morning with national DND as well as the Indigenous government. So the understanding is the next steps are a technical conversation.
You know, the GNWT is committed working with the joint venture contractors negotiating and evaluating options that will allow for this important project to meet its fiveyear schedule to be done within the available budget.
I know from my experience, Mr. Speaker, the successful negotiations take two willing parties to have to work in mutual respect and trust. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Great Slave.
