Thank you, Member from the Sahtu. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the community wellness and addiction recovery fund is an area where that can be targeted for youth. Also, we do have the community suicide prevention fund, and that can also be targeted to youths or adults in any communities. And those are currently taking proposals for programs. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for providing that knowledge. As we always say in the private sector, no funding, no projects. So my next question is can the Minister share her support on the once the SSI has developed the drug and addictions strategy for the region, is the Minister willing to support a postmeeting between SSI and her department to look at the implementation of this strategy? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yeah, Mr. Speaker, you know, with all of the work that I've been hearing from the Member that the Sahtu is doing to try to provide wellness and the workshops that they're doing and the collaborating that they're doing, I really commend them for that because, you know, we hear so many times that our leadership are not supporting our youth and our residents and, you know, here we are, we're trying to work together, and they're working together. So I really appreciate that. And, you know, I know that we have a bilateral coming up with SSI and, you know, I can if there's further things that they want to with they're moving forward with what they want, we do have the as a regional, as SSI is a regional government, they can provide for multiyear funding. So if they have an action plan, the community wellness and addiction recovery fund with the regional governments could apply for multiyear funding agreements to probably, you know, if they want to roll out what they want to target in their region. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister for Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Dehcho.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The GNWT mandate in the 19th Assembly identified that recommendations would be provided to the Government of Canada to make improvements on the Nutrition North program. Can the Minister commit to providing this House the recommendations that were provided to the Government of Canada for Nutrition North program? Mahsi. Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Dehcho. Mr. Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'll see what I can dig up from the last Assembly and provide it to the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, and I look forward to that. Is the Minister aware of any further changes or improvements to the Nutrition North program to include other communities in the NWT? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the Nutrition North is, of course, a federal program and they are currently undergoing an internal review, and so I am not aware of any changes that they may be making as a result of that review, but I look forward to the results. Thank you.
Thank you. And the Nutrition North program also provides grants for harvester support and community food programs. But none of my communities are eligible for these programs. Has the GNWT advocated the Government of Canada to increase the eligibility of NWT communities for these grant programs? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will have to get back to the Member on if there's been any official level discussions on this. Thank you.
Final supplementary. Member from the Dehcho.
Thank you. Can the Minister, Premier, describe how the GNWT's working with Indigenous leaders in my riding to address food security? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There haven't been formal conversations between myself and Indigenous leaders, but food security is obviously an issue across the North. At the Council of Leaders, there is very much an interest in the economy which, as was stated before, a good income goes a long way to ensuring food security, and so that's part of the interest in that area. But I look forward to having further conversations with Indigenous leaders on this. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Premier. Oral questions. Member from Monfwi.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just like what Mr. Hawkins said, to my favorite Minister, ECE, but housing is still my favorite. So, Mr. Speaker, so this is for the ECE. Mr. Speaker, as I said in my Member's statement, attendance rates in small communities for junior kindergarten to grade 12 is on the downward trend when you look at the data over the last ten years. Aside from COVID19, can the Minister explain the reasons why school attendance rates are trending downward? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Monfwi. Minister for Education, Culture and Employment. Yes, ECE.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, attendance has long been a concern for education bodies across the territory and have put in different mechanisms to try to address attendance over the years, but as the Member stated in her statement today, there is definitely a huge concern for attendance across the territory in today's world as well. And so this is really a situation and a challenge that is going to have to be addressed not only by teachers, principals, education bodies, but by communities as a whole and by a territory as a whole. Thank you.
Yes, thank you. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister explain what efforts that I mean, I'm going to her answer's going to be the same thing, but what efforts the Department of ECE has done over the years to help increase and maintain attendance rates of schools particularly in small communities? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, different education bodies have used different tactics because they see their challenges as being unique in communities across the territory. Many of our well, all of our schools have food programs to try and incentivize youth to come to school for that reason. Some education bodies send busses around the communities to pick students up from their home and bring them to the school. And, of course, teachers have come up with unique ways to try and incentivize attendance in schools and that could be anything from choosing subjects that are important to students. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, can the Minister explain if the department has any plan moving forward to help increase attendance rates in schools, especially in the small community? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can confirm to the Member that this is a holding topic at meetings with the education bodies, with the chairs, across the territory and is frequently discussed. Mr. Speaker, I can also confirm for the Member that this is something that is very important to me because we can it doesn't matter how much money we invest in education, if students around attending school then we cannot improve our education outcomes as a territory. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary. Member from Monfwi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister commit to provide more departmental resources to and work with closely with district education authorities and divisional education councils across the NWT to help increase attendance rates in small communities? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I commit to working with education bodies to understand how I can support their needs to improve attendance across the territory. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from Range Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this week, the Standing Committee on Social Development had received a presentation from an academic on universal basic income which was, I think, informative for many members. This is something I've long been supportive of. One way we could make it work in the Northwest Territories is through a resource dividend. This is something they do in Alaska, something that we could make work and have an easy way of funding and providing financial relief to everyone in the Northwest Territories. Is the Minister of Finance open to developing exploring this idea in this Chamber today? Thank you.
Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, if I'm understanding correctly I'm being asked if we would have a universal basic income, which a universal basic income means it's an amount paid to every single person regardless of their income status, regardless of their personal home household income, wealthy or otherwise, and that would then come from, of course, government coffers. So I just want to make sure that we're clear that universal basic income and guaranteed basic income are not necessarily the same thing. So let's start the conversation and make sure that we are talking about the same thing. Everyone, regardless of income, getting some money from the government, just because? Thanks.
I believe I'm being asked a question, Mr. Speaker, so I'll clarify. A resource dividend would be paid out to everyone in the Northwest Territories just like they have in Alaska. That's done through interest. Is the Minister willing to make changes to the heritage fund so we can extract interest from our investments and pay it out to Northerners? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If we want to have a discussion, that means questions back and forth. So, well, if we're going to do that, Mr. Speaker, right now, I think it's also well-known we have, really, three large diamond mines that provide all of the royalties in the Northwest Territories, one of which is on the verge of closure; the other two are staying open for now but it's been pretty clear, and said many times here, that that shelf life is coming due fairly quickly. So in terms of what we do with that resource income, firstly, it's not perhaps as big as I would like it to be. But, secondly, it is one of the very few owned source revenues that we have in it the Northwest Territories. Now as for what Alaska is doing, there's an awful lot of difference in terms of the regulatory space, political space, financial space, economic space, population space. So not sure that's going to be the right comparison. But if we want to take one of the few streams of owned source revenue of the Government of the Northwest Territories and just split it up into cheques for everybody, that is a much bigger conversation than just here. But I gather that that's where we're at. So I guess we'll have to see where the Member wants to go with that next. Thank you.
Well, the Minister thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister makes it seem like I want to give free money to everyone, and that's not the point here. The point here is to get a return on our investments. The heritage fund isn't working. It's been losing money for years. What's the Minister's plan to fix it? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So now we're onto the heritage fund. Mr. Speaker, the heritage fund, in it right now, I believe, has around $40 million. It's a fund that is, yes, meant well, it's meant to be where we put a portion of the resource revenues that we do get here in the Northwest Territories. It was never meant to be something that we would zero out or hand out dollars at a time or cheques at a time. There are jurisdictions in this country, for example Alberta, where they have at times of great wealth, due to their resource situation, essentially handed out money to residents, and there are different political beliefs as to the effectiveness of that as far as being a good use of public dollars. That is a much, again, larger political conversation in terms of whether that is an effective use of public funds to achieve the goals of equity and, you know, collective good, if that's a good way to ensure that people are having access to health care and education, which are done better on a large scale, or if, in fact, it should just go one by one by one.
Mr. Speaker, the heritage fund is coming up shortly in the Department of Finance. I don't know that it is losing money so that might be the response that I'll end with. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Final supplementary. Member from Range Lake.
Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for the Minister for joining me in this impromptu debate. Mr. Speaker, if not if we can't do a UBI, can we do a universal can we pilot a guaranteed income program, which the Minister spoke of the differences between the two, so can we do that instead of UBI? She seems to be lukewarm on UBI. Can we get guaranteed income in the pipeline as a pilot? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe my colleague from ECE spoke a little bit about this just recently in the House. It would certainly come likely to that department to consider this. And there's a lot of change that has happened quite recently to the income assistance policies that make that system more akin to what a guaranteed basic income would be, but not necessarily fully the types of pilots that are happening elsewhere. And there's an awful lot already that's underway, and hopefully those changes make a big difference for those people who are experiencing them and they can go through the process of an evaluation, which I think they might be on deck for through the GRI process, and we'll see how successful they are at this point. Thank you.
Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on my Member's statement on the other side of the equation, which first I mentioned I was going to go to housing, now I'm going back to Municipal and Community Affairs with respect to the ideas of creating a fee or tax holiday.
So I proposed ideas in the statement to bring forward to NWTAC. And perhaps maybe the MACA Minister can help lead this initiative. I know tax themselves is for the finance Minister, but this is about working with initiatives for municipalities under municipal legislation.
So the question specifically is to the Minister is would the Minister be open to a discussion to explore the idea to help create housing opportunities by talking to NWTAC about generating a tax or fee holiday for appropriate builds to stimulate the economy to build apartments and multidwelling housing? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife Centre. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm not a hundred percent sure if this fully aligns in my department, but I will definitely look into it and go to the department to see if we can reach out to NWTAC to have this discussion.
I guess the only other question I have, maybe just to close it off, is would the Minister be willing to sit down with me and some others to talk about what it could look like and maybe he could become the champion of the concept as we explore an idea? Whether it goes to fruition or not is something completely different. And as I stress, Mr. Speaker, as I finish, not in isolation, in other words, without good consultation. So would the Minister be willing to do that? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm always willing on working with the Regular Members to come up with solutions for problems that we may be having, so open to the discussion and we can arrange something. Thank you.
Oral questions. Written questions.
