Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Member's statement today talked about trying to find ways to help de-escalate violence in shelter and programs and opportunities that exist, and I even pointed at our First Nations -- Saskatchewan First Nations training program. Now, there's a lot of good in all of that, of course, but there's also opportunities. So my question will be directed to the Minister of Finance. And I'm going to give her a little second here or two.
The department, this section has the human resource department, and we do a lot of employee training currently right now. And so my question for the Minister of Finance is really not about that specific program per se, but the GNWT has a ton of training to employees. Is there maybe a way to start strategizing and looking at opening it up to NGO organizations to expand it? And we run things like verbal judo that could be extraordinarily beneficial to NGOs as an example and, hence, that's where the first question will start. Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife Centre. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. It's actually not new to me; it certainly has come up over the course of some years that I've been doing the budget dialogues. And I'd like to take it away, see if we can continue to work on this a bit. Some of the challenges that the programming that we have does come with costs, and it comes with costs that we pay for our employees. There's also some concerns I've run into around at what point would you be turning someone who's not an employee to be starting to look like an employee, particularly in the case of workers who are in areas of essential services such as shelter workers. They're already -- if they're receiving contribution agreements to the organization from the GNWT, we don't want to wind ourselves up in a situation where there's any blurring of lines as to who is the employer and what services they're providing. I realize in training programs that seems a small thing, but the concern is being where those lines might be. I'm certainly happy to have a conversation around whether there's ways we could make inroads on finding access points, but not necessarily in the same or equal way that an employee might. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I raise the issue of the Saskatchewan First Nations offered a program, and I guess I would say to the Minister that, you know, is something like this in general -- could this be worked into contribution agreements whereas in the GNWT works with the department of education through the Department of Finance under contribution agreements to find ways to bring NGOs supportive training up to a higher standard than what we're currently offering them, which is, you know, one-offs from time to time. So in other words -- allowing the Minister to get a second there. So in other words, I'm just trying to create an opportunity and foster better training and skills so we can help de-escalate violence in shelters. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think that we're starting to cross paths between different departments, whether it's EIA in the Premier's shop where I know they are doing a significant amount of work in terms of supporting our NGO sector in the Northwest Territories. Obviously ECE and the Department of Finance from the human resources perspective. Let me answer briefly and say anything's possible. Whether I'm going to be able to commit on the floor to a program that's rolled out in Saskatchewan, probably not, but certainly can commit to looking at that program and seeing whether there are elements or aspects of it that, again, as together with my colleagues we can utilize and employ and advance here. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Oral questions. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.
