Caroline Wawzonek

Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories is committed to providing a safe and inclusive workplace for all its employees. This includes educating our public servants on how racism can manifest itself in the workplace. Racism is a belief in a hierarchy of human value. It is a belief, conscious or unconscious, that some people are worth more than others. Racism is easy to see when it takes the form of specific acts of hate and violence, but systemic racism hides in plain sight. It is the kind of racism where the power of one racial group is exhibited and upheld over others in...

I want to say "procurement review" instead of simply saying "yes," because, really, the intention of the procurement review is to do exactly this, to look at barriers and to ensure that the barriers that may exist are brought to the attention of the government in a specific way so that we can identify the barriers broadly and systemically, not one by one, not solving one problem at a time for one proponent, but to truly look at having a system that is functional for everyone who is applying.

Again, the northern manufacturers policy is part of procurement review. I want to acknowledge that the...

Mr. Speaker, yes. Thank you.

I watched as an advocate at the national inquiry, as the national inquiry struggled to be something that was built in a legal system and built in a government system, which is, in fact, the same system of legality and government that they were trying to address and to change, and it is a struggle. I can't say whether or not we, as a government or the national government, are ultimately going to implement this specific calls to actions or when or how.

What I can say and what I want to do is do what the national inquiry was calling on, which was to implement the principles, to look at the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Keeping in mind the principles that were set out by the national inquiry for the put through the final report, which included stating that we need to take a decolonizing approach, that we need to have the inclusion of families and survivors, that the conclusions should be self-determined and Indigenous-led solutions, I have decided, Mr. Speaker, that, when work that has been done to date, organizing, as the Member has already described earlier, organizing the work that is happening within the government already, that could be happening soon and that may take longer to...

There are a couple of questions there, Mr. Speaker. I want to address the second one first, about people having sanctions for displaying racial bias in their hiring. There should not be racial bias in hiring. There should not be racism in hiring, and if that is happening, I want it brought forward. There are meant to be teams who work together. Human resources is involved precisely to ensure that the process is fair and that the policy of affirmative action is applied fairly and appropriately.

With respect to the first question, whether or not there will be some changes or a fairness review...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I had indicated earlier in my Minister's statement, I have two things I want to say. Firstly, is rolling out a very express anti-racism campaign, really speaking to the idea of challenging all of our own mindsets about what is racism and what is anti-racism, as a starting point. That is just one small starting point. Getting to the rub of what I think the MLA is asking me about targets, Mr. Speaker, I have also spoken in the House frequently about the Indigenous recruitment and retention framework that is being developed and put into place over the course of this...

At present, there is not a set service standard for responding under the northern manufacture policy. Again, the average time right now for processing the application, ensuring that it goes from start to finish completed, is four to six weeks. If having set standards is something that the manufacturers believe would be beneficial, would be useful, then, again, I would hope and expect that that is going to come through in the procurement review and that we can find something that is more functional and more workable, ensuring that, again, if there are other certain standards that are expected...

I was looking for some information rather quickly. I can give an average, and the average is four to six weeks. I am not clear if that includes an application that is for both of those. I expect that it is. It may be that it is less complicated if it is only under BIP. Mr. Speaker, I should note it doesn't include a timeline if there needs to be further information, if an application is incomplete at the front end. As such, the clock would get stopped on the government end to allow a proponent to add to their application if need be.

Those two departments, while under one Minister, have different areas, and they may not necessarily flow into the agriculture-commercial sector, for which ITI is responsible. Notwithstanding, Mr. Speaker, I was happy to discover very recently through my colleague that take a kid gardening is, in fact, a program that exists in schools across the Northwest Territories. Absolutely, I will commit to speaking to the Minister of ECE and the Minister of Justice to see what we can do to bring some synergy to this area and to agriculture more broadly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.