Okay, thank you. Any more questions for information items on page 55 to 57? Seeing none. I'm going to continue on. No further questions, please turn to page 54.
Education, Culture and Employment, labour development and standards, operations expenditure summary, 20242025 Main Estimates, $16,857,000. Does the committee agree?
Agreed.
Now I would like to go to the Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I move that this committee defer consideration of the activity labour development standards in the main estimates for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour, show of hands. Thank you. All those opposed? The motion is carried.
Consideration of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, operations expenditure, 20242025 Main Estimates, labour development and standards, is deferred.
Carried
We will now move to the next key activity. Moving on to the language and culture on page 58 with information items on page 60 to 63. Is there any questions? Okay, I'm going to go to the Member from Range Lake oh sorry, I'll go to the Minister.
Mr. Chair, with your permission, I'd like the opportunity to trade out my witnesses, please.
Absolutely.
Okay, thank you. What I'll do, is because the translators need a break, we'll take a tenminute break, and I'll go back to the Member from Range Lake. Ten minutes, starting now.
SHORT RECESS
Thank you. I think we're going to continue on. But before we do, I just want to say thank you to the interpreters. Have a good rest. We'll see you tomorrow. For the rest of yous, continue on.
Okay, thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Range Lake for pages 60 to 63, information item.
Arts funding to ITI, I believe is the plan to streamline things, immigration, all immigration's going to be parked here in ECE, and all arts funding, but this these estimates show plenty of arts funding continuing on here. So when is that happening and how is it happening? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, it is absolutely true that Members would have heard, as well as the public, that there is an intent to streamline arts spending within ITI and immigration within ECE. It was important to me that that announcement be made as soon as possible so that the work could then follow in a much more transparent and public way around making sure that we were transitioning stuff so that the staff that are involved in those programs so intimately could be involved in that planning process, and so you will definitely still see budgets reflected in their traditional home departments because that work is still required to be done and then once we kind of are able to have a plan forward and official dates and what that will look like, then we will go forward with tidying everything up. Thank you.
Thank you. I'll go to the Member from Range Lake.
So to be clear, there are is there an implementation plan, or is this just new policy direction? Thank you.
I'll go back to the Minister.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, as far as the implementation plan of what this will look like and how it will be done is something that is currently in the works within each of the departments, and so it's not something that I was able to, you know, quickly go and do in a rush over the last six months in order to make sure that it was separated out before we got to this part in our term together but I wanted to ensure that this is something that can be done in this fiscal year. So I guess my best response to the Member is stay tuned, and I will make sure that I am doing my best to make sure that Members are well informed of what is happening and when.
Thank you. I'll go to the Member from Range Lake.
Thank you. And I don't want to run into hot water with you, Mr. Chair, around what's been discussed with our committee review of this, but suffice it to say, like, this the announcement that was made publicly, I think it was the first time everyone became aware of it. And it is a little surprising because typically we don't see that. Typically we see things pretty static and changes come slow and usually there's either a supplementary estimate that comes up or some other instrument to move things along. So I will say this:
I like this. I think it's good initiative on the Minister's part. I think this is a sensible thing. I'd like to but, I mean, I would like to see this reflected in more areas of the budget or more areas sorry, of the GNWT where Ministers are making clear decisions around how things ought to work, and once we make that decision we work out from there. My only lament is that I would like it would be nice to see that in this budget, though, because when you have an announcement on, you know, budget day that all this cool stuff's happening and then you look at the document and it's not in there, then it leads us to ask these kind of questions and try to figure and try to piece together the plan. So at this point, it's a great idea and I look forward to seeing the plan. And, again, I hope we see more initiatives like this, but it would have been nice to see it reflected in this budget.
It also would be nice to see some increases to arts funding as well. We're chronically underfunded in arts, I'd say, compared to other some other jurisdictions, notably Yukon, which is a smaller budget than ours, smaller population, smaller territory size, all those things, but is often our closest comparison as a northern neighbour. And they have done remarkable things with their arts sector that by investing a significant amount of resource in it, and you see the dividends pay off. And it's complemented their tourism product. It's complemented their the you know, the cultural richness of Whitehorse and Dawson and the Indigenous communities as well. Like, there's lots there's lots you can look to. And I'm not going to I'm not going to look too favourably on them because I think far too often, we gush over the Yukon, and their problems are different than our problems, and we have lots going on here too. But one thing we could be doing more is spending is investing more in the arts, and I hope this shift sees that. I think ITI is perhaps more ambitious about how it chases people to invest, but I don't know because I haven't dealt with the department directly.
So maybe the Minister can speak to that because we've got a lot of people with expertise in this area. So, you know, how are we going to see these limited resources used more effectively by this change in policy direction? Thank you.
Thank you. I'll move to the Minister.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the Member's comments for sure. I can reflect on some recent decisions that were made that came out that were not well, that were fully baked, we will call them. And so it's you know, it's definitely one where finding that sweet spot of how people want to see ideas come out of the oven is definitely one that depends who you're chatting with. And so I appreciate the Member's support on this and look forward to being able to update him on what those timelines look like once we've had the opportunity to make sure that we're going about this in the right way to ensure that there is as little disruption to residents of the territory as possible. That's very important for both streams that we are combining together. I know that there's also been a lot of talk about this on the floor of the House, not only in this Assembly but also in previous Assemblies as well. And I guess this is one of the nice things, is this is one that I asked for last term and now we get now I get to do it. So here we are.
In regards to arts funding, Mr. Chair, we are currently second in Canada. And so while it's not first place, you know, we're a strong second as far as per capita spending in that regard. And so I, too, share the Member's excitement about where arts will go within ITI. I think one of the things that's really neat is there's kind of now going to be this suite of funding that kind of leads people through a journey from potentially being an art for art site type subscriber to developing it into a starting business and then potentially going from there. There is also that very natural and beautiful connection with art tourism as well, which the Member brought up, and which I can also say that in the opportunity I've had to travel to different communities in the South Slave, especially recently, art tourism came up multiple times, and the excitement around the potential of art tourism and the economic driver that that is was quite exciting and quite nice. And so the ability not only to connect people with resources to build business but also to connect people with other sources of funding, not only within the GNWT but also through those federal and third party partnerships that I know, that ITI definitely is in tune to and very excited to use in order to support the growth of arts in the territory. Thank you.
Thank you. I'll go to the Member from Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And
Sorry, I'll go back I'm sorry, going back to Range Lake.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So support to northern performers, I note that this funding, I'm assuming, is sunsetting. I think having a touring grant or something along those lines that let's northern artists reside in the north but it gives them support to travel elsewhere is an important aspect of arts funding that is often overlooked. Is that something that we can and I note that the line here says that it's going to be redirected towards new programs that will better support the creative sector. So is that in line? Are we going to find a way to support touring artists? Thank you.
Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we're just looking for it because it it didn't disappear. It was simply reprofiled under the art strategy funding and so it is still in here. We're just determining for the Member where specifically it did move to. But I can confirm for the Member that it's not sunset. Thank you.
Thank you. I'll go to the Member from Range Lake.
Okay. Finally, an area that we really everyone needs to get better at, especially in the North, is creative industry around digital property and trademarking and copyrighting and all this kind of stuff. If we can get our artists to preserve their IP and then get it into the international supply chains that can produce stuff elsewhere, have global reach but we got to teach people those skills so they are empowered to take part in the digital economy, especially our Indigenous artisans. Thank you.
Thank you for your comments. Now I'm going to go to Great Slave. Member from Great Slave.
Thanks, Mr. Chair, and sorry to the Member from Range Lake. I didn't mean to steal his thunder.
Culture and Heritage, very near and dear to my heart. It's where I started out as a public servant. Could the Minister explain the reduction of about $200,000? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. So this line item or the difference, sorry, in this line item here is a decrease mainly due to reductions of $460,000. And this is partly offset by funding from the Canada Council of the Arts to support artists across the Northwest Territories. And if the Member just gives me two seconds sorry, guys.
So this reduction here is largely due to a reduction in heritage centres across the territory. And so originally, there was a budget there of half a million dollars in the previous Assembly. That budget line item was moved up to a million dollars. But what we found was that heritage centres in the territory were not accessing that line item and so in recognition of the fact that that those dollars were not being used and might be better used in the government elsewhere, that line item was, again, reduced. Thank you.
Thank you. I'll go to the Member from Great Slave.
Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to the Minister for that. I notice that, just skimming quickly through the business plan, the really and I know the Minister has spoken to the fact that, you know, you don't have to be in the business plan to be doing important work, and I think the Minister of Finance has already reiterated that to me as well. But heritage resources being included in emergency planning is one of the pieces under ECE. Can the Minister elaborate on that.
Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, under the climate change action plan, one of the deliverables that ECE has is to ensure that as the North changes due to climate change, whether that's coastal erosion or the melting of permafrost, that we are doing our part to ensure that we're preserving the artifacts that come out of that. It's important for me to note that these heritage centre funding were specific to infrastructure development dollars. They weren't for O and M or other types of project funding. They were specific to renovations on existing infrastructure buildings. Thank you.
Thank you. I'm going to go back to the Member from Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Minister, for that. I guess I'll talk to her when I get to capital.
Shifting gears, looking at what we have been discussing yesterday a little bit about the ADM position, I don't really want to revisit that discussion per se. I do kind of want to just talk in general about the secretariats, both of them. They are both well, I mean, the French language secretariat is seeing a slight increase but is down since 20222023, and the Indigenous language secretariat is also down not insignificantly.
Insofar as that dollar amount is lower and we're looking at possibly creating a new ADM, can the Minister speak a little bit to what her vision is of an organization that seeks to possibly restructure what these language secretariats look like under an ADM? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, what I can say is that I would like to ensure that we have a department that is doing its part to support the revitalization of Indigenous languages across the territory. I think that there is work to be done both external and internal to the government, and part of that is the Indigenous Recruitment and Retention Framework that is put in play by the Minister of Finance as well and services to the public that is coming out of the GNWT. There's also work that is being done right now in regards to, that I've spoken to already today, like the MAP program that functions from the department. There's also immersion education in some of our schools and the desire to see immersion education grow and be offered in more schools across the territory. I know that when we travelled on the Education Act in the 19th Assembly, that was a huge focus and desire for communities right across the territory as well as Indigenous governments, that in our JK to 12 system we're seeing support of immersion education.
In addition to that, we also spoke today about the diploma program through Aurora College. And it is not lost on me that the incoming president of Aurora College used to also work within the Indigenous languages secretariat for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. So I'm very excited to see what direction the college takes as well. Thank you.
Thank you. I'll go back to the Member from Great Slave.
Thanks. And I guess I wasn't really clear. So I'm thinking more along not necessarily along the programs and services of Indigenous and French languages supported by ECE but, rather, what does that support system look like going into the future with these two secretariats and possibly a new ADM? I know the new president of Aurora College was the ED, I believe, of the Indigenous language secretariat. I'm not sure if ECE has found a replacement for that position, if that is being contemplated or if we're going along with the secretariat structure. Just wanted some more clarity around that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, my role would be to provide political direction. So for the operational detail, I'd like to pass to the deputy minister.
Thank you. I'll go to the deputy minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that what the department envisions is an ability to really elevate the prominence and focus of all the official languages of the Northwest Territories. And, you know, right now the those cultural and language reports through an assistant deputy minister also responsible for K to 12 education which, as everyone knows, is by far the largest activity of the department and it doesn't, frankly, get the time and attention that it deserves. So by having a separate ADM reporting through and having the management of both of those areas, it will help in terms of addressing bottlenecks in approvals, the ability to attend FPTs, a host of areas. And it'd also provide a career path for someone who, I think our vision would be, ideally the ideal candidate would be someone who speaks an Indigenous language. So it plays a host of roles. It's important, we've given it a lot of thought, and it's something that we believe is needed to give all of the official languages the time and attention that they deserve. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. I'll go back to the Member from Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try to be even more clear. Do you anticipate that the secretariats will remain as they are under a theoretical ADM, or do you want them to be divisions? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister or to the deputy minister.
