Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary.
Oral questions. Member from Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is related to a statement I gave a couple of weeks ago related to the importance of postsecondary education. Now that we've established our priority of having a strong economic foundation, I wanted to ask the Minister some questions about the college transition.
So first, can the Minister first describe to me the department's relationship with Aurora College now that the Aurora College board of governors has been reestablished? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, in the course of the last term we did a lot of work on legislation to do with Aurora College. So we had the Aurora College Act itself that was done. We did the PostSecondary Education Act, and we also had the opportunity under the previous Ministers to reestablish the Aurora College board of governors. And in terms of my role within that, I provide as Minister responsible for postsecondary oversight of the NWT postsecondary system as a whole, and including holding postsecondary institutions accountable under the Aurora College Act itself and the PostSecondary Education Act, and then there's also now, because Aurora College is arm's length and has its public board reinstituted, the board of governors is responsible for oversight of the operation matters to do with Aurora College and then Aurora College is responsible for the programming that occurs within its institution. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I note that a new president has been appointed to the college, and I congratulate Ms. James on her appointment. Can the Minister tell me what role she or the department had in the recruitment process?
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in short, none. And the slightly longer more informative answer in that is that under the Act, because Aurora College is arm's length, the board of governors oversees hiring of the president and the president reports directly to the board chair. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for the answer. The third question is how does the Minister provide direction to the college, and how is the college held accountable to the priorities set in the Legislative Assembly and the priorities of the funders of the college; how are they held accountable to the Minister and this Assembly? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am not responsible for operations within the college itself, but I am responsible for the oversight and also the funding provided to the college. And I do have a few accountability tools that I can use in that role. So the first, of course, is regular discussions with the chairperson and regular checkins, and I can state that we've already started those together. There's also the strategic mandate agreement, and the agreement sets out the operating parameters of the college itself and is developed by the college with input from ECE and with approval by myself. And then there's the accountability framework as well, which will be coming and implemented in the 20242025 school year. This framework is for all postsecondary education institutions, not just Aurora College. And the reporting required sorry, it will outline the reporting required by ECE every year and will help identify the financial stability of institutions and programs, whether or not they're operating effectively or not. So those are some of the tools, and some of those will be, of course, publicly reported to my colleagues in this House.
Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary. Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister agree to the board chair and president of Aurora College appearing in front of a standing committee should the committee make such a request? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question. As the Aurora College is arm's length and it is its own institution, the chair would be able to be contacted by the committee and be invited to appear in front of committee. I think it would be a great idea for committee to form that relationship with the college and be able to understand the board of governors' vision and where they'd like to take the college. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Premier, who is also the Minister for Executive and Indigenous Affairs. Does the government keep any inventory of contracts for essential social services and housing that are delivered by nonprofits in our communities?
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Mr. Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, there is no centralized collection of those. There is a number of departments and agencies with contracts and contributions with nonprofits, but I can say that the as part of our homelessness strategy, A Way Home, the integrated services delivery team is tasked with compiling those into a central repository. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So that's great news. I'm also wondering does the government have a sense of how much turnover there is amongst the nonprofits who are actually taking on these contracts for essential social services and housing? So another way (audio) same question might be are there lots of different NGOs available and willing to take on these contracts, or is it the same ones over and over again doing this year after year consistently? If that makes sense. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the government has relationships with the NGOs and so is aware of the turnover within NGOs and even just personally, you know, I'm aware of my constituency of the issues NGOs have in retaining staff. And so, yes, we are aware of those staffing turnovers.
To the Member's question about organizations and whether or not those same organizations are delivering services, I'm not sure what awareness the department has but I think they must they probably have a pretty good sense as well. They're the ones who are signing the contribution agreements. And I know from my own experience that there are only so many NGOs, especially outside of Yellowknife. There's actually very few NGOs. And so we do rely on those same NGOs year after year to continue to deliver services. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, then, in dealing with these nonprofits who have been providing the same basic social services in our communities year after year, often for decades, to what extent does the GNWT negotiate these contracts and the terms of reference for the funding contributions collaboratively with those nonprofits? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Many of those contracts are based on federal funding and so we have very limited abilities in those situations. When it's GNWT funding, there's a greater ability to collaborate. But I'll just take a guess that we could probably do more collaboration. I think we can always do more collaboration, and that's going to lead to more to better results and more satisfied organizations and people. So it is you know, I've been preaching about this for quite some time now, so I look forward to enhancing our collaboration with the NGOs. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Premier. Final supplementary. Yellowknife North.
So this is all great news. So my final question is, will the government commit to developing a policy on how such contracts will be developed collaboratively with stable multiyear funding attached for NGOs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And once again, I think this is great timing for these questions because as we embark on implementation of the homelessness strategy, those are the types of actions that we will be undertaking how can we ensure that NGOs have stable funding? You know, I don't think that the Member needs to convince me of anything. I agreed with much of what she said in her statement. NGOs can provide they do provide core services often at a much lower price than the GNWT can, and so we need to strengthen that partnership as we go forward and try to live within our means as a government. Thank you.
Thank you, Premier. Oral questions. Member from the Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further to my statement on holdover fires aka zombie fires, my first question to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, in preparation for the upcoming 2024 summer fire season what is the Department of ECC doing to assess holdover fires in our territory? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from the Sahtu. Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you, Member, for the question. I would say climate change and the extended drought that we've had over the last couple of years has certainly shown us the need to be proactive in how we're approaching these types of fires over the winters, and I think one of the things that we're doing is we're monitoring. We've got staff currently monitoring fires throughout the winter. And as the fall came and last fire season ended late in October, staff identified that these are potential challenges for the early spring. So the department has worked to plan to bring our staff and resources on earlier in the spring to ensure that we're prepared and ready to address any of the existing fires that were held over over the winter. There's a plan to do aerial as well as drone scanning early in the spring as well as having staff on the ground also doing assessments on fires. Currently, as they're monitoring over the winter, there has been some action on a fire at Paradise Gardens outside of Hay River because there was significant smoke that was bellowing from there that was bothering some of the residents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for that response.
Moving on to my next question, I'm glad to see that there is a monitoring assessment and an inventory of these holdover fires in the different locations across the territory. In particular, I've heard remarks made to me on several sites along the winter road south of Tulita, so if the Minister could put that on the radar for assessment.
My next question is is there communications underway with each community on the assessment and inventory catalog to the holdover fires close to the communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, annually the department regional wildfire management staff teams undertake community engagement every winter as part of an annual process. They meet with all the community governments, Indigenous governments, Indigenous leaders, and community members, provide them with information regarding wildfire response. And then also the community members are given an opportunity to bring forward their concerns from the past fire season, more concerns or thoughts they have on the upcoming fire season, and there's a public forum which gives them an opportunity to address those issues. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My last question to the Minister on the subject here is I'm very glad that there's a working relationship, more importantly communication with the department and the communities so the community leaders could feel very comfortable and safe as we approach the summer months here.
My next question is, is the department working to upgrade the emergency response plans in each community? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the emergency response plans are the responsibility of the community governments, and they're the ones that are responsible to prepare, adopt, and maintain the emergency plans and programs, including reviewing their emergency response plans annually. Environment and climate change is indirectly involved with these plans as they move forward or as they come into implementation in that we provide, you know, support and information to those activities. Over the winter, I know MACA will be delivering community emergency planning workshops to assist community governments in developing, updating their community emergency plans. MACA's also been delivering tabletop exercise workshops for community governments who want to validate their emergency plan and increase preparedness through practice. MACA has also had a wide variety of tools and supports for community governments for their emergency management role to add and build to capacity, including community emergency plan templates, an EMO portal for community governments to assess tools and templates to assist with community emergency management programs, a community emergency management video series to educate community emergency management officials on basic emergency management in the NWT emergency management system, and programming to be involved in the incident command system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from the Tu NedheWiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Indigenous representation report from the 19th Assembly was expected to increase Aboriginal hiring in the public services. I raise two issues here today on P1 positions. Mr. Speaker, in the 20th Assembly I heard from the Premier, Minister, that they were they want to work collaboratively and to build trust with Indigenous governments. My question to the Premier and I want to apologize for not getting these questions to you a little bit earlier. And I just want to say that can the Premier provide an update to the House about what action the 20th Assembly's taken to increase Indigenous hiring and to help restore the broken trust with Indigenous governments? Mahsi.
Thank you, Member from Tu NedheWiilideh. There's two questions there. Mr. Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I'll do my best of course. The Minister of Finance isn't here today, and so I know that questions directed to other it would normally go to other Ministers than come to the Premier when the appropriate Minister is not here. Just a bit of education to the public on why I'm answering these. So I'll do my best. It's a big question because there actually is a lot happening. This was a huge focus in the last government as the Member recalls, and so a lot of work has begun. So I can't go through everything that is happening but if you look at the Indigenous Recruitment and Retention Framework and Action Plan, that is the plan that is going to lead us through the next few years. There's a number of actions in there but overall the priorities are creating a culturally inclusive workplace, building capacity and career development, and fostering Indigenous leadership through talent management. So, basically, we want to create an environment where Indigenous people want to work for one thing. We need to figure out what are the barriers to Indigenous people for working in the GNWT, and that goes to things like reviewing the job actions. So every department now has a plan to job description sorry. Every department has a plan to review a certain number of job descriptions each year until they completely review those to ensure there are no barriers in those. There's exit interviews. So when employees leave, if there were issues, if there were they felt like there was issues of discrimination or systemic racism, those can be brought to the forefront and addressed. We have the Indigenous Career Gateway Program, which and I believe this it feels like it's getting more and more use. We have an Indigenous eligibility list for prequalified candidates. And I could go on and on and on but I'll wrap it up there, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you, Premier, for helping answer that question. My next question would be is that will the GNWT commit to revisiting the decisions that have impacted my constituents who were wrongfully dismissed from their jobs and replaced with nonIndigenous staff? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So if the Member wants to provide the Minister of Finance with some specifics about the instances he's talking about, I'm sure the Minister of Finance will be happy to look into those. Thank you.
Oral questions. Member from the Deh Cho.
Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of ECC. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister of Environment and Climate Change explain how his department is responding to the historic low water levels in the Mackenzie River that we seen over the last year? Thank you.
Thank you. Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question. The department's role related to low water levels is essentially providing situational awareness of the current conditions in the Northwest Territories. Our hydrologists regularly review real time data that is provided through a number of mechanisms. This information will tell us the current water level and the flow rates, and this information is provided through monthly bulletins about the current water conditions. This information then can be used by departments or EMO during the freshet, by infrastructure particularly during the barging season, and this helps to understand the short and longterm conditions related to low water levels. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, can the Minister explain if ECC is anticipating low water levels in this year for the Mackenzie River? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, while ECC is unable to predict how much rain or snow there will be other the next several months, it's safe to say that we would require an extremely high rainfall amount across the large geographic area to increase our water levels at this point. The winter snowfall amounts across the NWT have been extremely variable, and these very low snowfall amounts in Fort Simpson and sorry, ECC will continue to assess water conditions and distribute monthly NWT water monitoring bulletins to the public. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, and thank you to the Minister for that. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us what communications ECC has had with the Alberta government regarding the drought command team that they just recently initiated? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week, I met with the Alberta Minister of Environment and Parks, Rebecca Schulz. We discussed issues of shared concern, including low water levels. We discussed the concern that had been raised by the NWT Indigenous governments, partners, and residents about our low water levels. We also discussed the water shortage advisory that is currently in place for the Hay River basin in Alberta along with many other water sheds in the province. Water use by temporary and longterm license holders has been affected. Through our transboundary water agreement with Alberta, there's a commitment to continue to transparently communicate about water use during these times of low water levels. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Minister of Environment and Climate Change. Final supplementary. Member from the Deh Cho.
