Jane Weyallon Armstrong

Thank you. Well, I would like to see something, you know, like, because I'm sure the people would like to see something because there's a lot of young people that don't want to leave their community. They don't want to because with a housing shortage, people don't want to leave, you know, because if they leave then they're going to lose their housing, especially with the public units and leaving their family, their language, their culture behind is it's hard on some people, some of the young people, so they would rather do a lot of the training. And if we had more of that in small...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We know GNWT struggles to fill positions in Tlicho region. So why does the government GNWT need to keep control over positions they cannot fill? Can the Minister review all the unfilled position in the Tlicho region and work with the Tlicho government to transfer over positions that Tlicho government is ready to take on? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am not asking for the Government of the Northwest Territories to allow the Tlicho government to apply on funds for child and youth care counselling. I want to see the government work government to government and transfer child and youth care counsellor positions.

Will the Minister commit to meet with the Tlicho government to develop a timeline for transferring over the child and youth care counsellors to the Tlicho government? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one year ago, I asked the Government of the Northwest Territories to transfer child and youth care counsellors to the Tlicho government without restriction. I asked this because the child and youth care counsellors in the Tlicho region are not working but we know how important these positions are to our youth, which is why the Tlicho want to take ownership of these positions to make sure they are culturally appropriate.

We know in our region that families are stressed due to the housing crisis. This has an effect on their mental wellbeing. Our youth see and...

No. No, I think I just well, I'm more interested in the communitybased programs so I just I would like to see more of that in small communities, so. And if there's, you know, a plan on doing something about it, you know, that's good. Then I guess we will just wait and see what kind of plan they have in place. Yeah, thank you.

Well, one of the questions I was going to ask was the position increase for headquarter and three in North Slave, and that's all in Yellowknife. And I have four communities. There's Aurora College campus or office or building in Whati. They don't have their office they don't have a building of their own, but. So there's Whati and Behchoko but there's nothing in Gameti and Wekweeti. And there's, like, 4,000 of Tlicho or close to 4,000 people living Tlicho region. And we have a lot we have the highest unemployment rate in the NWT. And I'm very grateful for the recent announcement that Tlicho...

Yeah. No, no. As long as they're going to be having that discussion, that's okay, that's good, I'm happy. I hope we make some progress in this area because I strongly believe that, you know, Indigenous government running, operating some of these programming and services is good, you know, because they are our language is important to our people. So that's why I was just suggesting that. So thank you.

Thank you. And I see here at Indigenous language and education, okay, it's the same all the way across, and it's good, because it is important to have Indigenous language or education. This is compared to the early years of residential school, it's good that we have that. That's the only way that's that's another way of keeping our language alive and support it. And it's beneficial. I know that it is beneficial. But I just wanted to ask the Minister in general, because I did miss the other one, but I wanted to know if the Indigenous language funds can be transferred to Indigenous government...

Yeah, well, that's good because we need that too as well because in the region, like, so we can, you know, do better or try to do something that's going to help benefit our young people because maybe this, A, is not working, maybe B will work, you know, whatever it is that, you know, we're trying to do to help our young people. So I'm glad.

And then another one too is that here I see income support. So there's a huge increase. I just want to ask our Minister what are they doing to help the income support assistance client to get off income support to become more selfsufficient?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. And then I would like to say the same thing too. Congratulations, you guys did a good job, especially with the student finance assistance program, lifting the cap for the Indigenous students, because that's good. That's going to help a lot of our students in the small communities because usually the first year that they leave, you know, after graduating high school, they spend their first or second year upgrading and that's not it's a concern for a lot of parents. I'm not discrediting the teachers or anything because we have a lot of good teachers. We have a...