Caitlin Cleveland

It's been a long week. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Out in Kam Lake, we have a lot of businesses that are asking a lot of questions about the coronavirus and how this may impact their businesses. I am wondering if the Minister of Finance can speak to whether or not the government plans to help support businesses that may feel hardship during this time. Thank you.

Would the Minister be willing to work with those hundreds of arts teachers he just mentioned across the territory and the person who fills the arts curriculum role within the department of education along with people from different regions in order to develop a made-in-the-North arts curriculum that includes both cultural resurgence and art therapy initiatives, as well?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thought you said Frame Lake. Thank you for that. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. My first question today is: did Education, Culture and Employment recently hire an arts curriculum advisor? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, I spoke about mental health triage for our children. Today, I would like to focus on how we can help grow resilient children. Adolescence is a challenging time. Teens' bodies are changing as their minds are expanding. In addition to school and home pressures, teens are expected to travel the rocky roads of self-discovery and self-expression as they prepare for life after high school.

We do have NGOs like the YWCA, Rainbow Coalition of the NWT, FOXY/Smash, Northern Youth, community governments, and local sports associations working hard with volunteers to offer...

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I find this a very frustrating workday, today. To be quite honest with everybody, I wish that we had been able to sit and go through every detail of the entire future of this project before we came and thought about putting dollars into it. In actual fact, I wish that this had been dealt with 20 years ago, when diamond mines were at their height. Maybe the diamond mines would have actually paid for a lot more of our infrastructure if we had made that part of the deal. However, we can't go back. We can only go forward.

In regard to what the Minister of Finance...

In regard to communicating that information, once it is available, to business owners, how does the Department of Finance plan to get that information out?

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate the Minister's willingness to look into this. My final question today is in regard to the CALM courses that northern students currently complete in grade 10, and CALM traditionally is where students can work on resumes and they get their volunteer hours, but we hear frequently from northern youth that they need more than that in order to get themselves ready for real life. They want budgeting classes, and they want to know how to do their taxes, and they would like to know how to do business development training. A lot of people in the North...

When I look at the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, I see an entire division dedicated to kids' sport and recreation. I am not saying that we do not need that at all and I, in fact, do not want that to go away, because I feel that children's activity and especially physical activity is very important as a preventative mental health support system. However, when I look at the department of education, I do not see an equally robust arts division, and so can the Minister confirm how many employees are dedicated toward youth arts curriculum development for the Northwest Territories...

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Right now we sometimes have a lot of people off sick, especially when flu season hits, when staff is short, where do the calls get routed to? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I was just looking at the activity description on page 372 that says that the program, development and implementation ensures compliance with existing program policies and procedures and also supplies training and capacity required to effectively and efficiently deliver the programs and services. Does the cost of building the ramps and the cost of hiring people to do those types of home accessibility or home renovation projects all come out of this dollar figure here? Thank you.