Caitlin Cleveland

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, certainly workforce development and training doesn't happen in a vacuum and a lot of the training opportunities that we see in the Northwest Territories really do rely on partnerships with industry in order to do them. We're seeing a lot of, you know, need for trades. That requires a partnership with an employer. We're seeing a lot of need for on-the-job opportunities where people can still put food on the table, make a living, not have to leave an employer they may have been with for a long period of time and still be able to fill a new role and...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, a couple of things, and I will try to be brief. The first piece being that this falls also within the mandate of Aurora College, so an expectation that they're doing some of this work, that they're looking to stack funding, that they're also looking to bring in research dollars and have been noted in, I believe, was within the top 15 of research institutions across Canada for multiple years now. And that is work that we can continue to expect them to continue and to grow on and stack.

This also has to do with partnerships with industry. I was here...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker -- or sorry. I keep doing that today. Mr. Chair. So ITI funds Tlicho government, for example, and other governments across the territory for -- through the community transfer initiatives, and that way Indigenous governments can hire their own economic development officers. In addition to that, there's also regional superintendents and economic development officers that work for ITI as well. And in addition to that, Mr. Chair, one of the policies that ITI uses and has even used for interns is the remote work policy. So there have been people who have applied on...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, that will be available mid-summer. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So, Mr. Chair, our economic vision at this point is in draft form. We are currently putting dedicated resources to helping us finalize this work in short order. And the draft that we do have is an overarching GNWT 50-year vision. It aligns with our governance vision of the NWT -- or the GNWT, which also aligns with our 20th Legislative Assembly mandate, so making sure at the end of the day that we're tying all these pieces together. And from there, we really need to make sure that -- you know, to the previous conversation I was having with the Member from Frame...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, it is because a lot of that work happens over in ECE. So same Minister, different hat. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I just promised my colleagues I would be far more brief.

Mr. Chair, we are doing reviews. These are the hard questions we ultimately need to ask. You know, there's a lot of people across the territory who apply on these programs more than once. Sometimes it reflects kind of the economic landscape and goals of the territory. Sometimes it doesn't. And so, essentially, where we're at right now is at a point where we have to ask ourselves the hard questions of, are these programs designed to ensure that everybody gets a small piece of the pie, or do we want programs...

Thank you very much Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I want to thank the Member for his comments and questions in there, and the Member is always a huge proponent for economic development across the territory and and also for the strategic infrastructure.

Mr. Chair, when we are talking to industry and their desire to really invest and to build capital for the projects that they're working to develop in the territory, they talk a lot about, you know, the need for energy and the need for roads. And I know that the Member is a huge for -- a huge supporter of the Mackenzie Valley Highway, and it's projects...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, there's a slight delay on getting this work back. We had a couple of amendments that we wanted the evaluator to make in terms of essentially the fullness of the review that we wanted. So we've gone back to the reviewer and asked them to make some amendments, and then once we get that back, we'd be happy to share the findings with committee. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, so our economic diversification and business support branch of ITI, it works very closely together and are always looking for ways to kind of cross-pollinate. We see this even with both kind of the mineral side and the art side. And so, for example, when we travel to our mining shows, we're constantly making sure that we are also including our artists in those opportunities as well. We also have a new tiered funding model that enables more data-driven decision-making through a centralized intake within ITI, and there are performance measures that are...