Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Labour market outcomes in small NWT communities continue to lag. At the beginning of the 18th Legislative Assembly, the Government of the Northwest Territories made a commitment to develop and implement a strategy to increase employment in small communities.

The Small Community Employment Support program provides $4.2 million in GNWT funding to expand employment and training opportunities in small communities. This includes an additional $3 million we agreed to put into the program when the last budget was approved. I want to state for the record, Mr. Speaker, that this...

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, and that will be anywhere from now until the end of the fiscal year.

Yes, as I mentioned, our mandate is to close the skill gaps in the Northwest Territories, create jobs, create employment, do skill development and training for residents in the Northwest Territories. Previously, when we made those enhancements, we were looking at these regional centres. I do believe to date we have five regional centres that have applied on the program. We funded their projects.

We want to continue to support those projects because they do have employment, they do create employment as well as training, but we have taken a new focus now. We heard from Members that we want to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are continuing to work with the leadership in Ndilo to look at addressing it. As the Member knows, we do have a lot of infrastructure projects within the department, community learning centres, schools. We always review our 20-year capital needs assessment, and sometimes things get put off and then some other things take priority year after year, but we are continuing to work with the leadership on addressing that.

Yes, we can get the values for the projects, but some communities might have had multiple projects; others might have just had one, but we can get some of the exact numbers. It varies from community to community as well as from project to project. As I said in my Member's statement, we will be meeting with the rural and remote communities to get some direction and work on how we move forward with the strategy as well as with the fund.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is a concern as well, because we really want to work with the community to get a school put in place. The last discussion that we had was the First Nations wanted to put in a bigger school, so we are waiting for a P3 project. Based on our capital standards, the school size that was supposed to go in there, they wanted a bigger one, so we are looking at a P3 study, and we are still waiting for that report and that information from the Behdzi Ahda First Nation.

On universal childcare, not at this time. I can't commit to that. As I did mention, we are in bilateral negotiations with the Government of Canada to get some funding that will roll out early learning and childcare action plan. As I mentioned, that will take us to the end of this government, and we will be sharing that with committee once that bilateral agreement is signed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That will be in 2018-2019. We did get a technical status evaluation in March of 2017, and we had to look at the recommendations and put it back in the books, and looking at 2018-2019.

Yes, we did start doing some work on the action plan. I do want to inform the Member and Members of the House that we're currently in negotiations with the Government of Canada on a bilateral agreement that will include an early learning and childcare action plan that does outline spending over a three-year period that will take us to the end of this government. Mind you, it's not a universal childcare action plan, but it will be an action plan that will help guide us in early childhood programming and services to the end of this government.