Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I guess just further to my series of questions, I know that that we're you know, potentially the GNWT is not currently looking into different ways to access immigration, and I understand that there are a lot of different pulls within the government. But one of the things that is very clear is that increasing our population size is the biggest way to increase our revenue source here in the territory. It's it's one of the easiest ways to increase our revenue source.
And so having people working at increasing our our population size off the side of our of their desk maybe is not the most effective way to go about it. And so further to looking at the Nominee program through community engagement, what other ways is the GNWT working at not just immigration but population growth here in the territory?
And I guess my question maybe I don't know if direct that at ECE or the Premier. But I think that this is a very important topic and one that requires a little bit more conversation. Thank you.
Minister responsible for ECE.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know the Member said that she wasn't quite sure who to direct it to. So I appreciate you putting that confidence in me that I could answer the question.
ECE is not a lead on any sort of a population growth strategy; however, we do lead the labour file and recognize there is a significant need for labour in the territory. It really is holding back a number of industries and holding us back from providing the level of service that we want. So there is a lot of effort going into this from the HR standpoint, and I know health is doing work in terms of HR. We are looking at how we can attract more people from outside of Canada to the territory.
And we've been doing that every year. Our numbers have been going up. We made significant gains. So I don't want to say that nothing is happening. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when we look at the population growth numbers for the territory, we're not a territory that's growing. I know that the Yukon and both Nunavut have seen growth in their territorial population numbers. Here in the NWT, we have not seen the same success.
And while I understand that there are there is work, sorry, going on within Health for recruitment, I laid out four different suggestions today as to how we can be very proactive as far as increasing our labour pool, increasing our population here in the territory. And I while I understand that we have a very broad spectrum of expectation on what our government does, increasing our revenue source needs to be one of them.
And so if if all of the answers I got today generally was we're not really looking at that right now, then then where do we go from here as far as proactively growing our territory? Because we need a growth strategy. We need a higher revenue source, and we need a higher population in order to get that. So what are the next steps? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I agree, we need to grow our population. We need to increase the number of qualified professionals we have here in the territory. And that is why myself and the Minister of ITI have spoken about the immigration file and how we can better combine our efforts. And perhaps that is looking at amalgamating our resources and using them more efficiently. But there is I can assure the Member that while I can't just say yes to everything that she asked, I can say that this is a we do have a renewed focus on this, and we are moving in the direction that the Member would like to see us move.
Unfortunately, we have 22 priorities here. Immigration was not chosen by this Assembly as a priority, or population growth. So that has resulted in our focus perhaps being on some of the other some of the other areas that you know, especially me as the Minister of ECE have had to focus on. Thank you.
Yes, thank you very much for that, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister for that response. It's one that I'll continue to come back on because although we have 22 priorities, we also have to pay for them. So we have to look at different revenue sources, and people are definitely our greatest resource, and the North is an excellent place to come and set down some roots. So thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So maybe a warning to the next Assembly: Don't ask for 22 different things if you don't have a plan to pay for them, because I agree, we need to focus our priorities; we need to ensure that we can pay for what we want.
All of you know, I often hear that we want more of this, we want more of this, more of this. But on the rare occasion, we do hear some suggestions on how we can increase our funds, our revenues. But for the most part, we hear, more, more, more.
So I thank the Member for raising this issue that we do need to to raise our revenue, do need to put a greater focus on our economy, on our population, and on our labour force. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for oral questions. Member for Monfwi.
