Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Tabling of documents. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table an order of the Alberta Energy Regulator to Imperial Oil Resources Limited regarding the Kearl Oil Sands Processing Plant. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Monday, March 6th, 2023, I will present Bill 72, Opioid Damages and Healthcare Costs Recovery Act, to be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Notices of motion for the first reading of bills. Member for Thebacha.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Monday, March the 6th, 2023, I will present Bill 73, An Act to Amend the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act, No. 4, to be ready for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I now call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of committee? Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Madam la Presidente. Committee wishes to consider Tabled Document 81319(2), 20232024 Main Estimates, with Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Mahsi, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. We'll take a short recess and resume with the first activity.
SHORT RECESS
I will now call Committee of the Whole back to order. Committee, we've agreed to consider Tabled Document 81319(2), Main Estimates 20232024. We will now consider the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Does the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment have any opening remarks?
Yes, I do. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I am here to present the Department of Education, Culture and Employment’s main estimates for the fiscal year 20232024. Overall, the department's estimates propose an increase of approximately $24 million or 6.7 percent over the Main Estimates 20222023. These estimates support the mandate objectives while continuing to meet the GNWT's fiscal objectives to prioritize responsible and strategic spending.
Highlights of these proposed estimates include $16.9 million to support new initiatives. The amount is comprised of:
$10.326 million in additional federal contribution related to the CanadaNWT Canadawide Agreement on Early Learning and Child Care;
$5.149 million in additional funding for improvements and changes to the Income Assistance Program; and,
$1.458 million for further investments aimed at enhancements and changes to the Student Financial Assistance Program.
The proposed estimates also reflect a total increase of $5.197 million for other adjustments, which include:
$2.028 million for additional federal contribution related to the CanadaNWT Cooperation Agreement on Minority Language Education and Second Official Language Instructions for 20192020 to 20222023;
$1.87 million in additional federal contribution towards Building Skills 4 Success;
$511,000 for the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association for 20202021 to 20222023 collective agreement cost increases;
$500,000 in new funding to support the operational needs of heritage centres; and,
$368,000 for the school funding framework to provide consistent and administrative support to small schools, which is offset by $80,000 in interdepartmental reallocation of French language communications and services budgets.
The proposed estimates also include $4.205 million in additional operations budget related to the reprofile of Labour Market Development Agreement from Fund 3, third party, to Fund 1, operations, and $51,000 in inflationary adjustment increases to core funding for nongovernment organizations.
The estimates are partially offset by other decreases of $752,000 broken down by the following target adjustments:
$662,000 in contract services budget reduction that supports the items identified in the 20222023 Main Estimates;
$80,000 in amortization adjustment for 20232024; and,
$10,000 in insurance transfer to the Department of Finance.
The increases are further partly offset by a total decrease of $1.672 million reflecting funding scheduled to sunset on March 31st, 2023. The sunsets reflect yearoveryear changes in the departmental activities in the CanadaNWT Workforce Development Agreement, CanadaNWT Agreement on French language services, Education Act Modernization Research, student records coordinators related to the federal Indian Day School Class Action Settlement records, CanadaNWT Early Learning and Child Care Agreement Extension, Specialized Territorial Support Team resources specialized funding, Education Renewal and Innovation and Northern Distance Learning budget changes.
This concludes my opening remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Do you wish to bring witnesses into the House?
Yes, I do.
Thank you. Sergeantatarms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.
Minister, please introduce your witnesses.
Thank you. On my left is the deputy minister John MacDonald. And on my right is the assistant deputy minister of corporate services, Sam Shannon. Thank you.
Thank you. And welcome. Does committee agree to proceed to the detail contained in the tabled document?
Agreed.
Thank you. Committee, we will defer the departmental summary and review the estimates by activity summary, beginning with corporate management starting on page 35, with information items on page 36. Questions?
There are no questions. Please turn to page 35. Education, Culture and Employment, corporate management, operations expenditure summary, 20232024 Main Estimates, $10,982,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Culture, heritage, and languages beginning on page 38. Information items on page 39 to 41. Questions? Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. It's one of my favourite parts of the ECE budget. I understood that there was some kind of revenue study being done for the museum. Can I get an update as to what happened with that? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister of ECE.
Thank you. The Member is correct; we did have a contract in place to have a revenue study completed. Unfortunately, the contractor did not deliver that revenue study. So for some information about the path forward given the challenges we've been facing, I will hand it to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister MacDonald.
Thank you, Madam Chair. As the Minister indicated, the revenue study was not able to be obtained. So the department is in the process of breaking down what had previously been a substantial plan to prepare to renovate the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre. We are planning to break that into smaller segments that may be more feasible. The priority being the NWT Archives and replacing that space and enhancing it going forward. So our intention is to advance that as part of the department's needs assessment and ultimately the capital planning process for the next cycle. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I guess in the seven years I've been here, I've seen a lot of studies on the museum, you know, needs assessments and some really good work's been done. And there's a lot of money that needs to be spent to invest in the facility. So is there now an overall plan as to how to do some of that work? Thanks, Madam Chair. And could it be shared with Regular MLAs, even on a confidential basis if required. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister of ECE.
Thank you. There has been a lot of work done so we're not trying to reinvent the wheel as the deputy minister alluded to. What we are doing is going to pursue the renovations through the normal capital process. So Members will have a chance to get that information through that process. There's nothing that is shareable right now really beyond what the deputy minister has stated. Thank you.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, okay, thanks. Maybe something for the transition plan. Of course I know the last time I asked the Minister this, I think it was close to a visit, about changing the name of the facility, which seemed to be tied to actually fixing it up. So are we ever going to change the name of it? And as I understand now, there's no obstacles in the way, there's no protocol stuff, we can just change the name to something that's more reflective of northern culture and heritage. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister of ECE.
Thank you. As part of that capital process and doing those renovations, we're tying those things together. So once we begin that work, we will consult with Indigenous governments and make determinations about how to move forward with names and what those names might be. Thank you.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I know we've you know, we're consulting on changing the name of the Stanton Legacy Hospital, or the building. You know, I'm not sure I'd even put that as high a priority as the territorial museum, but I want to encourage the department to move forward on that. And you can just put it on the engagement page, you know, and see where that takes us.
But I want to move on to in the last budget, the Regular MLAs worked with Cabinet to increase the funding for heritage centres across the NWT by half a million dollars. And I see that increase in here. Can someone just tell me about the uptake in the first year? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister of ECE.
Thank you. I will hand it over to one of my witnesses. But I will say that for the small organizations to receive a big chunk of money unexpectedly, it makes it difficult for them to just spend it if they didn't have a plan to spend it. In Hay River, we had, you know, the flood, and people were dealing with that, so. I don't think that it saw a significant uptake, at least not at all the centres. But for more information, I'll hand it to Mr. MacDonald. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister MacDonald.
Thank you Chair. With respect to this additional funding, one of the things that we determined was that we needed to support the various heritage centres to be able to plan to undertake any type of capital enhancements to their facilities. So in addition to the typical operational funding that we have been providing to them prior to receiving this additional funding, we've provided each of them with what we refer to as infrastructure planning funding.
So that's intended to support them, to help them come to us or to the federal government with a clear sense of what their needs are. So each of the facilities or each of the organizations received $50,000 over and above what we added to their regular funding. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Okay, thanks. Yeah, that's helpful to understand. So I think I've asked this question before maybe but GNWT has quite an extensive inventory of artwork, you know, across, you know, in different buildings. There's some in this building. There's some really cool stuff actually in the Caucus room. But I don't think we actually have an inventory of all of this artwork and some of it is of tremendous value, dollar value, not to mention heritage value. Is there an inventory of this, and what's the role of ECE in preparing an inventory?
Minister of ECE.
Thank you. The role of ECE is providing some expertise when it comes to the value of the pieces, perhaps even the handling of some of them. If it's discovered that this, you know, object in this office should be in a climate control facility, but we what we've discovered is that the GNWT's existing sort of inventory management software and I'm going to have to hand it to someone else to get into the details and provide exact names, but that can handle the inventory of the art. And so I believe that that work has begun. But I can hand it to Mr. MacDonald for more detail. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister MacDonald.
