Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment Minister of Education, Culture and Employment
The Honourable Caitlin Cleveland was first elected in the 19th Assembly as the MLA for Kam Lake in 2019, and has served as the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, and Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment since 2023 after being acclaimed to the 20th Assembly.
In addition to owning and operating a northern business for over 20 years, Minister Cleveland worked in a variety of communications and policy roles in both the public and private sectors before entering politics.
Between 2019 to 2023, she chaired the Standing Committee on Social Development, fulfilling a goal to be a part of the discussions and decisions affecting social programs in the Northwest Territories. Her noteworthy work on the Committee included guiding the considerable review and input into recommendations on housing in the NWT, suicide prevention, and improvements to caring for children in care and building supported families.
Within the scope of her portfolios, Minister Cleveland is focused on helping children grow into successful NWT residents that recognize opportunities and develop successful careers that contribute to a growing economy. She advocates for new approaches to sector diversification and innovation, and ensures the North is welcoming both skilled foreign workers and investment in the critical mineral resources across the territory. She persistently explores solutions for efficient and equitable access to programs and services, upholding a shared vision of an NWT where people are supported in the ways they wish to live, work, and grow.
Minister Cleveland is a lifelong resident of Yellowknife where she lives with her husband and their three children.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my parting Member's statement is a gift to interpreters. It is going to be both slowly spoken, and it is going to be brief.
To the next Assembly, I wish you a long and uncomfortable priority setting exercise because that will hopefully mean that you land with less priorities than this and previous Assemblies. We often get lost in the weeds thinking that priority setting is an exercise to outline what the government does for every single item we want to see some form of growth on. But it isn't. It is a question of what you want your collective legacy to be.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister speak to whether or not the health and social services midwifery recruitment team is looking at fostering relationships with midwifery training institutions to create practicumlike opportunities here in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Debates of
, 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 167)
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Kam Lake also has a very proud page in the House. We have Liyah YakeleyaGrymalosi who I'd like to say a very huge thank you to. And I also a notice a couple pages around the House who I had the honour of photographing as tiny little babies, including both of the ones to your right and your left. So thank you very much for their service.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I want to thank the Member for Yellowknife Centre for the time that she gave of her own personal time, especially before this Assembly, in sitting down with people and answering a multitude of questions. I was one of those people that had a lot of questions about how being in this building, especially as a parent with young children might look, and I really appreciated having that insight.
I wanted to add though for my colleagues, because it's something that has come up in a lot of conversations, and even at board of management, is how do you make sure that...
Debates of
, 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 167)
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, in the early days of this work, when reaching out to the department and asking for dollar figures on this, I was advised right away that the dollar figures would not be substantive as to the entire cost of it because you're also paying for preventative when you're paying for preventative care, you're also preventing things like heart disease, like diabetes, and so the costs like that really can't be easily measured. One of the things that I will say, though, is that one thing you can't put a dollar figure on is people's quality of life and their...
Debates of
, 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 167)
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Yes, I have had numerous conversations. I will say that the Minister was very open to having conversations throughout the life of her tenure as health Minister with both myself and the MLA for Inuvik Twin Lakes. It has been reiterated to both of us that this is an ambitious timeline, especially given the legislative backlog and the legislative agenda of the Department of Health and Social Services. That said, I do believe that this work is very important work. And some of the things that we've seen in other departments within the or sorry, within the Government...
Debates of
, 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 167)
Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my right is Ms. Christina Duffy, legislative drafter.
Debates of
, 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 167)
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Bill 80, Dental Hygienists Professions Statute Amendment Act amends the Dental Auxiliaries Act and the Health and Social Services Professions Act to require the Minister to recommend to the Commissioner regulations under the Health and Social Services Professions Act; to regulate the practice of dental hygienists; designate the profession of dental hygienists as a profession; transfer the regulation of dental hygienists from Dental Auxiliaries Act to the Health and Social Services Professions Act, and replace genderspecific language with genderneutral language...
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that as well. I know that this is not, you know, an area where we'd need to reinvent the wheel. The Northwest Territories does this with other health care positions and other jurisdictions do it with midwifery. So I appreciate the Minister's support on that one.
Mr. Speaker, I'm wondering what work is being done to create opportunities and support certification processes in the Northwest Territories for internationallytrained midwives that might be interested in moving to the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of health and social services.
Mr. Speaker, in February of this year, the Minister indicated that the midwifery program implementation was being held up by staffing challenges. Can the Minister provide this House with an update on recruitment for the midwifery program? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
