Caitlin Cleveland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, your Standing Committee on Social Development is pleased to provide its report on the Child and Family Services Act Lifting NWT Children, Youth and Families: An All of Territory Approach to Keeping Families Together.

All children are sacred. NWT children and youth are talented, unique and powerful. But not all children have access to what they need. Over 98 percent of children and youth in care in the NWT are Indigenous, even though just 57 percent of the population of children and youth are Indigenous. The extent of destruction and trauma on Indigenous...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And I appreciate that, you know, variety is the spice of life and especially when it comes to being able to put together kind of a robust fleet I guess of programs that support food security. And like I said, agriculture programs are important as well longterm, and I fully, fully support those, and I think there's a lot of really, really strong business ideas that have come out of some that funding and that are being developed right now across the North. But when we speak about food security, one we're not necessarily looking at all of those agriculture...

Yeah, thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I think this is a really important subject and really important question because although I know that there is a huge push to increase public housing, and I understand the huge importance of that, there is also a need for us to be or for the GNWT to be able to fill vacant positions in communities that they are creating both because the communities need it, this and there's a huge push to put a lot of these support services back into communities to serve residents of the Northwest Territories. And so it's it's one of those, you know, catch 22s, where you...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, just a oh sorry, I've got sorry, I've got really bad feedback right now. So just in regards to this this priority here, I see a lot of our priorities of course are very connected, and so in conjunction with increasing employment in small communities from the inside out, there's also a potential for increasing employment in small communities from the outside in. And when I think about our priority of increasing regional decisionmaking authority and also the drive to ensure that some positions within the GNWT are also returned to communities, that kind of brings the...

In favour.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate that this is a bigger conversation, and I welcome having a larger conversation with the Minister for sure. And one of the things that might be helpful for both schools and residents alike is having a public reporting mechanism where people can really see what the realistic wait times are for different specialty services in the Northwest Territories. And then from there, are able to either make alternate arrangements or look at other interventions in the meantime, especially when it comes to learning and development of students across the...

In favour.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate the Minister's willingness to have this conversation together. Today, many schools are fall are finding that they they follow the process to reach out to secure support services within NTHSSA but that they don't necessarily hear back from NTHSSA about the appointments, the timing to wait for them, or the availability.

And so will Health and Social Services commit to service standards for schools so that schools are able to communicate not only with students and families but also understand what is required to access supports for students...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My next question is in regards to the second piece of this priority, which is work with private sector and Indigenous governments to improve the availability of private market and housing options.

We've heard a lot about increases to public housing options in order to address the waitlist, and then we've also heard, especially even in the sitting of the Assembly, how the availability of private market rentals has had an impact on the ability of, even specifically the Minister of Health and Social Services, to fill vacancies in communities, specifically Behchoko...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a decade ago the Supreme Court of Canada released a unanimous decision recognizing that learning to read is not a privilege but a basic and essential human right when it found that a BC student had a right to receive the intensive supports and interventions they need to learn to read. This year the Ontario Human Rights Commission released the right to read inquiry report on human rights issues affecting students with reading disabilities calling for critical changes to Ontario's approach to early reading and curriculum and instruction screening, reading...