Rylund Johnson

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate it, and I look forward to seeing that. I believe it is quite a high return on investment, especially up here, once again, if you get an artist to meet certain qualifications, they can go access Canadian Council for the Arts funding.

I just want to get a sense of how much of this arts funding is for artists in communities, because I believe that's really the market we need to look to develop.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm glad to see we're spending $6,285,000 on Indigenous languages. I believe Mr. Norn already asked some questions about how this was oversubscribed one year. I know there's more and more federal money on the table, and I believe every time we invest in this, it allows our Indigenous governments to leverage that additional funding for Indigenous languages. I guess my question to the Minister is: are there any plans to increase this amount?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Minister's commitment to look into that and see what other jurisdictions are doing. Ultimately, I think one of the beautiful things about it is, if we create these online service portals, and we're seeing this done for more and more departments, then in certain cases you don't need the administrative staff. They essentially are replaced by the internet, which then means we have more money to provide people the actual Income Assistance, and, you know, perhaps a phone. I think there is a strong, once again, cost-savings argument to creating an online portal...

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is an issue I will look into further and have further conversations with whether we can either increase that donation amount or look what other museums are doing. I wanted to move onto the line item $6,285,000 for Indigenous languages. Can I just confirm that this is all GNWT funding, or is this also federal funding in there?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I look forward to having these conversations, and I think it just seems common sense that not having a phone is a barrier to getting a job, so maybe we could look into this more. My next question is, in regard to Income Assistance, for the $34 million we spend a year, how much do we spend in administration? That would be the staff and the people to actually provide money to the end users.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I had to Google, just so everyone is aware. Charles is the Prince of Wales. I didn't actually know that. I would be very happy if we changed the name of that. Talking about the Crown is one of my favourite topics. Madam Chair, my question is, I really think and need to emphasize that our museum is for the entire territory, and we have some of the most unique, cultural history in the world here, and our museum's job is essential to preserving that. I wanted to speak briefly about revenues.

I love the museum. Increasingly, it has more and more tourists going through it...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It took me some time to realize that income assistance and income security are two different terms. My questions are in relation to Income Assistance. My question right now is: Income Assistance is a great program, but one of the issues I consistently have with my constituents is that they don't have a phone and they don't have the Internet, which doesn't allow them to look for jobs. Often, if they don't have a phone, they miss their appointments, which then means they miss their Income Assistance cheque. Then, it kind of spirals. They lose their housing, and we end up...

I am a little perplexed that, at this point with such a close deadline, the Housing Corporation has not seen the application and isn't aware of the shortfalls. I heard the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation previously discuss not wanting to set proponents up to fail, wanting to make sure, if we are going to provide our funding for any housing project, that we know that it is sustainable. I do not understand how the Housing Corporation is capable of doing that without looking at the response from CMHC and without knowing the shortfalls in the application. My question is: is the...

Yes, thank you, and I recognize that, and that is the complication of me asking these questions. You have committed to reviewing the funding formula, but, to me, the conversation about the funding formula really is not complete without recognition that there are millions of dollars in the system that is not ours. I think that figure is extremely important to all conversations going forward. Moving on, I wanted to Northern Distance Learning. I understand we are in phase 3 right now. Are we meeting our expansion goals, and can you give me an idea of what communities are next?

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There has been quite a lot of talk about the Arnica project over the last weeks in this House. I am happy to hear that there has been a meeting, and it seems there is still some hope for this project to go through, although I am still a little confused on some issues. The Minister had previously clarified that they had not seen the CMHC report and, in fact, relied on CMHC. My question to the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation is: has the Housing Corporation seen the CMHC application, and are they aware of the defects in that proposal?