Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, during my Member's statement I’d talked about the small community employment program that's administered by ECE. I'd like to ask the Minister a couple of questions. Mr. Speaker, what is the plan for the utilization of the small community employment program in this fiscal year?
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you. With the small community employment support program, it's a program that's been around for many years. We're going to continue to do the work and focus on the training on the job as well as community initiative, provide project based on training. Training on the job has been very successful in our communities. Currently, I believe we do the program in 26 communities in the Northwest Territories. Small community is defined by any community that is less than 1,000 people. In the 2015-16 fiscal year we had 303 NWT residents participate; 196 went through the individual training on the job, and the other 107 through group-based training opportunities just to name a few of the successes of this program. We're going to continue in those two areas and hopefully we get more requests. There was a surplus of the funding last year and hopefully moving forward we get more people in the communities getting ready to take on some of the jobs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I'd like to ask the Minister another question on this. Mr. Speaker, has the Minister engaged other Ministers in carrying out the mandate of increasing employment in small communities specific to this particular program?
I think the program is very unique and very successful, and as I mentioned on April 20th when we did release the Labour Market Information and Needs Assessment and we're starting to develop the action plan that we're hoping to table in the fall session that from now until we develop that action plan we are going to be getting a lot of feedback and information all our stakeholders and that includes other departments as we move forward with the Labour Market Information Action Plan, but also utilizing the small community employment support program as we start developing skill development in our residents.
Can the Minister advise how the Department of ECE will be allocating the small community employment program to the communities, whether project based or so much per community, just a quick word on how the funding will be allocated to the small communities?
As I mentioned, Mr. Speaker, there's 26 communities that we currently work with. The reason 26 communities is because we don’t have ECE regional office in all the communities, and the ones that are under 1,000 people, we work with them and we help them work on giving the applications to apply for this funding to support on-the-job training and support group-based activities in the community as well to develop that training. We'll continue to work with all our communities, the 26 of them, to make sure that they have an understanding and in having questions asked in a House like this also brings some public awareness to organizations, community members who want to access the program.
Mahsi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Minister indicated that the program was underutilized, undersubscribed, so I'd like to ask the Minister if information on how to access small community programs and what type of projects that the small community employment program can be tied to has been distributed to the small communities. Thank you.
I believe our staff regional office has worked really well in the communities. One thing that I did mention here in the House earlier or last week was our employment transition office. It's the first year of the program that the pilot's taken place in and they're out in the communities talking about these kind of programs, as well as getting our residents into employment job opportunities by developing skills and getting the education that they need. The employment transition officer is just going through his first year. We're hearing a lot of great successes on it and we're going to continue to use them to promote this program in the 26 communities throughout the Northwest Territories, and we do have five ETOs currently.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
