Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about ways we can support the artists’ community in our North, and as I said, that represents one in five of our population, or I should say almost one in five of our population. Mr. Speaker, it is a considerable amount of people and I would say that they certainly deserve a certain amount of respect certainly by this government.
Saskatchewan has adopted what’s called the Arts Professions Act and what that basically does is it recognizes, supports, enshrines and protects the work that these artists do to make sure that they’re treated fairly and certainly treated properly.
Mr. Speaker, my question would be to the Minister of ECE -- Education, Culture and Employment -- and I’m hoping that he would task his officials to investigate the Arts Professions Act as put into statute by Saskatchewan government, to see if we can enshrine and protect our northern artists to make sure they’re getting fair value for work here in the North. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This is an area that we can definitely explore in other provinces, the Arts Professions Act that they may have in other provinces. But we do provide, as Members would know, increasing funding to support performers as well, and also artists. The Member talked about recognizing and supporting them. We currently do that already and we’ve increased our funding, but this is legislation that we can definitely look at in other jurisdictions as well. Mahsi.
I want to recognize the fact that the Minister has worked hard to make sure that artists do receive both their due and financial support from this government and certainly by his department. This Arts Professions Act, which I’ll table later today, is a very small act. It basically defines what artists are, and how they’re recognized and certainly how they can be supported by the government. Again, it’s by the Government of Saskatchewan protecting Saskatchewan artists.
Does the Minister see any chance that once he has a copy of this, does he foresee any chance that perhaps he can task his department officials to investigate it right away and see if they can respond with some type of discussion paper into the new year, if that’s considered possible or reasonable? Thank you.
Mahsi. I did commit to the Member that we will explore and review the Saskatchewan legislation to see if it has the context and also relevance from a Northwest Territories perspective. So I did commit already and we will look into this. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
