Mahsi. Mr. Speaker, today I spoke of the unemployment and employment picture in Tu Nedhe communities. I’d like to follow up with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
The employment section of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment in Yellowknife has career development officers who work closely with Income Support officers as a part of the Income Support Program. How does the department plan to reconcile the problem as far as career development in small communities where there are no career development officers?
Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do recognize the small communities that may not have career development officers, but they are served out of regional offices. Specifically on Lutselk’e and Fort Res, they are being serviced out of the South Slave regional office. There is also, specifically with Lutselk’e…. We have a joint partnership with DEAS, schools and Aurora College.
Just on the career development alone, those officers do provide counselling and, also, workshops in the communities that deal with resume writing, budgeting and educational planning. We do provide those services to the communities of Tu Nedhe and also other small communities.
What tools do the career development officers have? I know the Minister’s responding as to what they do, but what tools do they have at their disposal for dealing with industry replacing Income Support clients and jobs with industry and industry-related employers?
Our career development officers from the regional perspectives and also the community level have direct contact with the industry, our government — the GNWT, ECE department — and with the local First Nations organizations and also with Income Support — the clients, if that’s the case. So they are providing various workshops, like I said earlier, providing certain tools for individuals to enter the workforce, whether it be upgrading or taking on a training-on-the-job program.
Mr. Speaker, we do provide Communities Skills for Work, which prepares our Northerners for work in the workplace, and also community literacy projects, which we provide to the communities. There is also a literacy counsellor at the community level who does provide assistance to the community members. The Community Skills for Work provides education training specifically for people with low literacy skills. We do highlight those in the most isolated communities — low literacy skills. We tend to work with the focus on those individuals at the community level.
Does the department have, as a standard, an assessment of the skills of the unemployed people in the smaller communities — or unemployed people, period, I suppose?
We do have data on information that the Member’s referring to. I’ll be more than willing to share that with the Member. It’s been updated every now and then from certain communities. In some communities there is high unemployment. Some communities, specifically on training and education, the post secondarys…. We do have that data at our Department of ECE at our disposal.
Can the Minister provide this Member with a plan on what happens with the Income Support program and the clients in the Income Support Program in the area of career and employment development?
There’s been some changes within the Income Support area. We are developing a new initiative, “ready to work,” for those individuals who are employable. So that’s one of our initiatives at Education, Culture and Employment. I’ll be more than willing to share that with the committee and the Member once it’s produced. I’m also willing to share that information the Member has requested, certainly.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
