Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement, I talked about funding towards the anti-poverty initiatives for the GNWT. I would like to ask the Minister responsible for the anti-poverty, the Minister of Health and Social Services, a couple of questions.
The GNWT is committed to compiling a broad set of social indicators to measure its progress on the Working Together action plan. Separate from individual departments' monitoring and accountability plans, how will the GNWT measure and report on its overall success in combatting poverty? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have already talked about this a couple of times during this particular sitting. One of the challenges we have is that we do not have a truly defined definition of what "poverty" is in the Northwest Territories, which does make it hard to evaluate any of the work that we are doing against it. We have made a commitment to work with our stakeholders to find a definition.
At the same time, during our last Anti-poverty Roundtable, the department did present a number of criteria that we are going to consider monitoring and evaluating to help us determine success. We have got a lot of feedback from the participants on things we should be looking at, and that work is being evaluated now so that it could be brought to the advisory group to see if we could bring those criteria down so we could actually have some solid things to evaluate. That work will help us evaluate success going forward, but there are a couple of things that need to be done. The description or the definition is certainly one of them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In the GNWT, which Minister in what department is responsible for tackling and coordinating the various government initiatives that fall under Working Together?
There are a number of Ministers who have responsibility for the individual action items that are included within our anti-poverty documents, the GNWT's Anti-Poverty Action Plan. My role is to continue to work with stakeholders to get this information out, and to remind Ministers of their obligations under this strategic framework, which includes five areas in supporting children and families; promoting healthy living; ensuring safe and affordable housing; making our communities sustainable; and providing an integrated continuum of services. Mr. Speaker, we work together to make that a reality.
What new, not continuing, actions or initiatives have come out of the most recent Anti-Poverty Roundtable?
The priority of the most recent roundtable was to actually develop the evaluation criteria that we will use going forward, and the conversation around a definition came up again. That is our goal in that group, is to share information on different projects that are happening, to share good ideas so that people can take those good ideas back to the regions.
The main activity coming out of that is let's get this evaluation criteria in place; let's start evaluating the great success that is out there today from the NGOs, from the Aboriginal governments, from the community governments, as well as from the GNWT.
Masi. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement I talked about all 14 departments working together. How does the GNWT's vision for reducing and eliminating poverty in the NWT include a plan for eliminating silos between the departments? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we've been hearing about silos for a number of years, and it's certainly a pet peeve of mine; I've raised it as a Regular Member on multiple occasions.
One of the things that's being done to help us break down some of the silos is we actually have some interdepartmental deputy minister committees that are actually tasked with making sure that they're working together on shared files, that they're not duplicating efforts, that they're working for a common goal. They have opportunities to discuss the different pillars that were identified in the framework, as well as the initiatives and work being undertaken on a number of the different priority areas across the Government of the Northwest Territories; for example, mental health and addictions, Justice and Education are clearly partners with Health and Social Services all in an attempt to break down the silos and work together.
Do I believe that all the silos are gone? No, absolutely not, but we are working in the right direction to start breaking these down. I'd say over the last eight years we've seen a number of these silos start to fracture and come apart and work starting to happen together, which I think is a good thing for the residents of the Northwest Territories.
Masi. Member for Frame Lake.
