Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the right to vote is an important piece of what it means to be Canadian. Voting is not just a right guaranteed to you in our democratic system, it is also a responsibility that comes with receiving the benefits of that system. All the services, all the freedoms, all the good things that you enjoy every day, all come with a price: the responsibility of voting to ensure the strength of our system.

Mr. Chair, it wasn't long ago that the right to vote wasn't extended to all Canadians. Up until 1951, women were prohibited for running for their bands' councils under...

The departments right across of the Government of the Northwest Territories make a serious effort to work together. We have a Deputy Ministers Committee that our deputy ministers sit on. The deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, as well as the deputy minister of the Youth, and Education, Culture and Employment. As Ministers, we also have a social committee that we all sit on that both Ministers take part in, and we have actually met with the Minister of Youth to update him on our programs. As any programs change, we will let the Youth Minister know.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs is more than willing to support any community that is looking at accessing any of our programs, so if the MLA would want, we would be willing to send a regional representative in to help them actually fill in the application. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Gender-based analysis, gender-based plus analysis, is critical to looking at all policies and procedures that impact. One policy does not apply equally to every situation and every person, so it is important to look within that lens to actually see how different programs, different policies affect individuals, women, people of disabilities, etc.

Yes, we are currently in the process of working with the Northwest Territories Status of Women to look at how we can start to implement gender plus based analysis within the government policies.

Child care is a huge issue for women throughout the Northwest Territories, throughout Canada, and internationally, actually as a barrier to accessing employment and other opportunities as well, but employment is what we speak about today here. To address some of that, the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment did do an increase to the child care subsidies that daycares are getting. He did a reformatting of their formula funding to address that. I am and always will continue to be a strong lobby for child care.