Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Would the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment support the NWT Arts Council as an independent arts organization? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the Member for Frame Lake asked these questions not long ago, I gave the answer that I would look in to the viability of creating an independent arm's length arts organization in the territory, and that is still the plan. We are going to look into this, what would it look like, what would it cost, and what could it do. So we're beginning that work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I'm wondering about timelines. I like to have timelines. So since the department recognizes that the 181.5 million federal dollars flowing to the Canada Arts Council for the arts, sorry, is not accessible to the territorial government, when will the department commit to reviewing the organizational structure for the NWT arts so that we can make it an arm's length organization. So I know they're looking into it right now. We've just come off of almost two years of the department reviewing an arts strategy. So I'm wondering what kind of timeline are they working towards.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the work to determine when that happens is underway. We are going to do a full review of arts funding programs across the territory. This isn't something that can be done in isolation, just creating an arts council. We need to take stock of what we're doing, how much are we spending, and how effective is it, and how can it be improved by the creation of something like an arm's length arts council. So that work is happening over the coming years. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm wondering if the Department of Education, Culture and Employment has the capacity to complete this work during the length of the 19th Assembly? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Depending on what you prioritize, you can get a lot done in the next couple years. That being said, there is a lot of work that, like I just mentioned, we want to do in conjunction with this. And that is reviewing the programs that we have, how effective they are, determining if there's better places we could put our money, and one of those things we're going to look at is the arts council and what it could look like in the future. So I'd like to say that we could just get it done, but I also want to make sure that we research it, we look at what's happening in other jurisdictions, and then we do something that's right for the territory given our specific circumstances, because I don't want to create an organization that is set up to fail. I don't want to create an organization that is going to be very costly and not produce results. So we have to do all of this work before just moving ahead with something. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake
