Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Member for calling me wise and having wisdom. Sometimes, I wonder, as I age.

Other resources that are available to youth is not an answer I can give at this point. It would take some thought, but I will commit to actually sitting with the Member if he wishes and actually looking at other ways that the community can see this vision actualize.

Again, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs has a variety of programs there, too, with the goal of supporting youth because we recognize that providing supports to youth is important for not only physical activity but also for mental wellness. So we have other initiatives such as the Children and Youth Resiliency Program that can provide supports, too. I am just speaking from what we have as a department, but I can commit to actually having the department work further with the Member if he would like to see if there are other external sources of support to support a youth centre...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to recognize Jonathan Beland, who is our page from Range Lake in the House today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The other person I want to recognize in the House today is Mr. Brad Firth, commonly known as "Caribou Legs." Mr. Firth ran 7,400 kilometres across Canada to raise awareness for family violence and the problem of the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. This is a huge feat, and to you I offer as well my sincere appreciation. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, today is International Women's Day, a day recognized throughout the world as a chance to celebrate women's progress towards achieving gender equality while identifying the challenges that still remain. In this spirit, I am pleased to discuss the Government of the Northwest Territories mandate commitment to support the delivery of workshops that help to get women into politics. In the Northwest Territories, women have largely been underrepresented in elected positions at all levels of government.

Mr. Speaker, we have made some progress in the Northwest Territories. I am pleased to...

The Government of the Northwest Territories does recognize universal child care as a very proactive option to address the obstacles, one of the obstacles, for women entering employment. As such, the Minister of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment is looking at universal child care as an option and seeing if it can be realized within our government.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories has done a few things, actually, to address the wage disparity between males and females. It was the last Assembly that actually increased the minimum wage. I hate to say that, but the majority of people making minimum wage happened to be women in society, so we have addressed that by slowly increasing that. I did hear from the Minister the other day as well that they were looking at more increases to that.

The other thing they have done is, many, many years ago, the Government of the Northwest Territories did a gender equity...

Actually, we do collaborate quite closely. We do have our electoral officer attend the campaign schools with us. We will have the Department of Justice actually attending with us also to give us some feedback on where we need to move more and in what direction. We are working quite closely with the Status of Women on this issue. We are trying to be as inclusive as possible with the whole direction of getting more women in leadership in politics.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The reason that the accomplishments that we've done with addressing with getting more women into politics wasn't in the mandate speech was because this Cabinet recognized that today is International Women's Day. We decided that it was important enough that we wanted to denote a whole Minister's speech to this issue. It was decided to not put it in there and actually provide a whole Minister's speech to address it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, I'd like to recognize Ms. Angela James, who I consider a huge friend a role model of her own. Ms. James has dedicated her whole life to actually working with Indigenous children and communities to bring forward their strengths and their pride in their culture, and she is one woman who I have known most of my life and I totally respect and bow my head to. Thank you, Ms. James.