Caroline Cochrane

Mr. Speaker, our cultures and languages are the foundation of our work in Education, Culture and Employment. When our languages and cultures are strong, our people are strong and our work is much more successful. I am pleased to report that we are seeing progress in our efforts to retain, preserve, and promote Northwest Territories languages and cultures.

We are currently finalizing a multi-year action plan as a companion piece to the Strong Cultures, Strong Territory Framework. The action plan contains 25 categories of actions needed to ensure the Government of the Northwest Territories is...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. When this was first brought to us as Members of the Legislative Assembly, I did talk a little bit more to the Member from Kam Lake, who was bringing this forward. At that time, my biggest concern was around the money. Within this, what will be coming up later, is that introducing that, if this goes through, that there would be an extra $30,000 that can be utilized a year before the election or during the year of the election. I have always been about fairness and I have tried to maintain that fairness throughout all of my work here at the Legislative Assembly. This doesn...

The act does state that we have to have an administrator in place, so that position will stay until we get the new advisory committee initiated. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The competition for the position closes at the end of this month, and then we will be starting the interview process as soon as that's done, so we are assuming that the person will be hired before the end of this calendar year.

Mr. Speaker, I want to recognize the recipients of the 2018 Minister's Culture and Heritage Circle this morning. For the youth award, we have Miss Alice Twa, and her parents attending, of Yellowknife, on her behalf, her parents, Erin O'Rourke and Cameron Twa. Thank you. Our individual award went to Tishna Marlowe of Lutselk'e. Our elder award went to Joanne Tetlichi, of Fort McPherson. The group award went to Old Town Community Association of Yellowknife, represented by Lisa Seagrave, Rosalind Mercredi, and Dave Kellett. Our Minister's Choice Award went to the Designated Gwich'in Organization...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was just confirming with my department. When I first took over this position, actually and that's my background, which is in early childhood development specializing within the Social Work area, I talked about having schools as hubs in communities and having daycare providers, having speech pathologists and audiologists being able to be in schools, making it a centre or a hub, or that some parents, hopefully, would alleviate some of the residential fears that come with schools, trauma that comes with that, making it more of a hub.

I'm really pleased to report that our...

I am not 100 percent sure what mandate commitment we are actually talking about, because we have quite a few mandate commitments. I am sorry, but I have to ask clarification on what mandate commitment specifically the Member is asking about.

Thank you. Yes and no. Yes, a lot was done on paper. However, they were using computers, using Excel spreadsheets, et cetera. So, yes, paper, but still using computers. This is a system, and we need to have the proper systems, that will network all of them together. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is that the withdrawal of the utility payments by the Housing Corporation was done in September 2018, so we haven't really seen a huge impact of it yet. I should clarify in stating that not everyone that is in housing programs is actually an income support clientele. It is combined.

Our goals within the income support program are to make sure that people have enough to meet their basic needs. We are ensuring that no one that is on income support that is in public housing or outside, not only in public housing, but in market housing, that their utilities...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The ground will be broken, or we will finally have a place, and the construction will begin in the fiscal year 2020-2021. Thank you, Mr. Chair.