Caroline Cochrane

Mr. Speaker, our culture is our identity, and throughout the North, we have many individuals and organizations working to preserve, revitalize, and promote our cultural practices. I want to recognize the recipients of the 2019 Minister's Culture and Heritage Circle from our ceremony this morning.

For the Youth Award, we have Mr. Corbin Sinclair from Fort Smith.

For the Individual Award, Ms. Karen Novak of Yellowknife.

The Elder Award goes to Alfred Taneton of Deline.

The Group Award goes to the Northern Life Museum and Cultural Centre in Fort Smith, represented by Ms. Rachel Dell.

The Minister...

The small community employment fund is actually one of the successes of this government, in my opinion. It is actually putting money into the communities based on where the community thinks that it would be most appropriate. I can't stand here and say what successful projects are, because, in my opinion, every single community is a successful project because that community has defined where they want that funding to go.

One thing I would like to say, though, and I have said it to the communities that I have had access to, is that most of the applications that I have noticed coming in for the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Within Education, Culture and Employment, there is no direct funding for signage for trails. However, the good thing about consensus government and the departments is we do try to work together, so I have spoken to my colleague with Infrastructure. There is actually funding within Infrastructure, probably within the community access program, that can be utilized. We are more than willing to work with the MLA if he would like some more information on that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to also take a moment, even though they're not in my riding, to recognize Felix Lockhart, Rhonda, grandson Tristan, and even though she's not here physically, I'd like to recognize Sandra Lockhart. She was one of my best friends and, while she was ill at the end, I told her to write her stories and what I did get was I got to read her last published story in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Inquiry Report, and I will treasure it forever. So, Sandra, you're not here physically, but you are here in my heart forever. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The basic, quick answer is yes. The district education councils and the district education authorities, under that, are responsible for deciding where they're going to use their funding, the best allocations of their budgets, but it was just last year that we realized that there were huge surpluses within our education districts all over the place so, in my opinion, that's not good. It's not good to have surpluses, huge surpluses, when we have children education services in need. I said that the other day. We need more resources. Part of getting the resources is, if we have money sitting out...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also want to take a moment to recognize a Page of Range Lake, Mr. Dexter Edjericon. Thank you for being here, and to all of the other Pages, thank you for all of the work that you provide to us. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, that Bill 48, Post-Secondary Education Act, be read for the third time; and, Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded vote. Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker.

Any good program needs money. We all know that. I don't think I am going to get any argument on that one. Part of the action plan, an action plan is supposed to be comprehensive. The strategy says: this is what we want. The plan says: how do we get to that strategy? If we are not looking at how we are getting funding, then that would be a detriment to the plan going forward, so we will be open to accessing outside funding sources. I also want to say that we are already doing some of that. The Department of Education, Culture and Employment regularly accesses outside funding sources, such as...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is quite disheartening to hear these comments today, in all honesty. I had a conversation with the MLA the other day about one organization representing the interests of all of the people who would be covered within that. This is an example of how, sometimes, it doesn't work really well.

We started out with the Arts Strategy, and between November 2018 and March 2019, we have done 16 key stakeholder engagements, we have 277 general public members who responded to an online survey, and then we realized that we hadn't engaged with the Arts Council, the NWT Arts Council...

Again, the act is kind of vague on the authority of the Minister, and I'm very respectful of them, they're all elected positions, so I'm respectful of their allocations and what they see fit for their regions. We don't tell the district education councils what to use their surpluses on. I felt that was very limiting; it's very patriarchal, it's not how I practise, so we gave the flexibility to say, "Tell us what you're going to use your surplus on."

The sad thing is, Mr. Speaker, that the South Slave District Education Council never identified busing as an issue within their surplus plan, so I...