Katrina Nokleby

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going to take advantage of the Minister being responsible for both ECE and Justice and, as well, make him answer a few questions that his colleague, the Minister of Finance, may have input on. My first question is: what is the Minister doing to work with local organizations, such as BACupNorth, in addressing systemic racism, not only in the public service, but also in the criminal justice system across our territory? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just sort of back to my question one before, I know that there has been a lot of replacement of the water treatment plants over the last while. I know there has been an issue with training workers and at times communities have stayed on boil-water advisories, not so much that the water is actually bad; it's more that the testing in order to prove that the water is good does not get done. I know maybe a little bit out of this, but is there a need to increase, maybe, this budget line item in order to do more training or to increase or to deal with any aging infrastructure...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I am really glad to hear that. Good luck with getting the solid-waste facilities in there. I think it's a good move. I look at the numbers for this item, and it is a constant number so far in the last couple of years. Does the department anticipate having to increase any of this funding in the next while? Is there an aging infrastructure issue at all with the water and sewer services that would sort of fall under this line item? Thank you.

Thank you for that, and I do appreciate the department is working on this. I'm not trying to say that's not the case. When I look at the budgets and we're asked to approve three times the amount of money for 811, which is only expected to go for the next eight months of the year, and that is looking to decline, to me, I would rather see us approving $1 million for 811, knowing it's the one that is going to phase out, versus us underfunding 911 right now and saying we're going to give all this extra money to 811, which might free up and then become available. Then again, it goes back to the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am looking at the 911 program funding on page 345. I note that it sits at $1.24 million, the revised estimates from last year, where this was the same. There is no increase to the funding for 911, despite conversation back in October session. I look at the actuals for 2019-2020, and there is already a $1.7-million line item there, so already within the estimates we know we are under, $500,000 underfunded. Then when I look back at revenues for 911, there is a significant discrepancy between the $397,000 collected in 2019-2020 on page 328 versus the $1.027 million...

Yes. Let me rephrase. I'm sorry I don't have your position right, but the departmental staff indicated that it would be consistent with all of the other seniors programming across the Northwest Territories government. Is the trend across all of the Northwest Territories government towards income testing for seniors, and is that something that the Minister is looking at for her department specifically? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Is there a move to be implementing income testing for seniors across all MACA programs or a variety of MACA programs in the upcoming year? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am just going to piggyback a bit on what my colleague has said and again more of a comment. I feel like this is an area where I would be supportive of any sorts of increase of funding. I like what my colleague was saying about the idea of using youth and sports to act as almost sort of a mental-health-and-wellness-counsellor-type situations and the crossover that could be happening between almost all of those types of departments. When I look at the positions, there are seven across the entire territory, which makes this really quite small. It's probably one of the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My last question just has to do with the upcoming cultural sensitivity and training that we will be doing. Does the GNWT make available to all GNWT employees cultural sensitivity training that has the purpose of raising awareness on how to interact with Black or people of colour in the workplace and other departments? I do recognize that I am kind of asking a lot of the same questions. Thank you.

Thank you for that, Madam Chair. My next question is: does this organization or this area of the department support SAO development and retention? I have become aware, in my time in the North, of how difficult it is for SAOs to be retained in small remote communities at times, often being at the whim of mayor and council. I'm just curious to know: is this an area where the funding would be to support those types of employees and their roles? Thank you.