Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment Minister of Education, Culture and Employment
The Honourable Caitlin Cleveland was first elected in the 19th Assembly as the MLA for Kam Lake in 2019, and has served as the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, and Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment since 2023 after being acclaimed to the 20th Assembly.
In addition to owning and operating a northern business for over 20 years, Minister Cleveland worked in a variety of communications and policy roles in both the public and private sectors before entering politics.
Between 2019 to 2023, she chaired the Standing Committee on Social Development, fulfilling a goal to be a part of the discussions and decisions affecting social programs in the Northwest Territories. Her noteworthy work on the Committee included guiding the considerable review and input into recommendations on housing in the NWT, suicide prevention, and improvements to caring for children in care and building supported families.
Within the scope of her portfolios, Minister Cleveland is focused on helping children grow into successful NWT residents that recognize opportunities and develop successful careers that contribute to a growing economy. She advocates for new approaches to sector diversification and innovation, and ensures the North is welcoming both skilled foreign workers and investment in the critical mineral resources across the territory. She persistently explores solutions for efficient and equitable access to programs and services, upholding a shared vision of an NWT where people are supported in the ways they wish to live, work, and grow.
Minister Cleveland is a lifelong resident of Yellowknife where she lives with her husband and their three children.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, while the department no longer requires clients of income assistance to partake in productive choices, I do understand the goals of the Member, and I have really appreciated all the Member's statements that he has done on income assistance. It has provided me with the opportunity to learn about what his goals are and what the realities are in the communities that he represents.
With that being said, I want to confirm for the Member that as part of the new income assistance program that there is a performance measurement plan that is intended within that...
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, it is one of those ones where, you know, we look at the way that things operate and sometimes we have ideas how to make them better. Sometimes they work out. Sometimes they don't. This is one that the department is very confident will help us grow our resources for culture and language, specifically especially language revitalization. There's you know and like the Member said, none of us will disagree with that. I think one of the things that's really critical about this as well is we were able to internally fund this position. We did not have to go...
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think that we this theme day could not have come at a better time because we are at the beginning of what I see as a very exciting time within the department of education and within income assistance. We are on the verge of entering into this new program. It starts in the month of July. That new program will see increased opportunities for client navigators to be able to work with income assistance clients and to be able to work on those pathways. And part of the information coming out of that will be through this performance management plan...
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Yes, Mr. Chair, it was immediately taken down and an apology was immediately issued to residents of the Northwest Territories. And right away, following that, checks and balances were put in place with staff to ensure that something like that did not happen again, and we were able to use our existing resources to make sure that that was done. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am lucky enough to serve on Cabinet with a housing Minister who also calls one of our small communities home and is also very passionate about making sure that the teachers who live in her community and in other communities in the Northwest Territories have a place to lay their head so that they can provide quality education to our students. So the Minister and myself have already begun to have meetings about how we can work together to support one another in this effort because we recognize it as a significant need across the territory.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it was my understanding that ensuring that students have pathways to education and then being able to return to their home communities is something that was changed in the last Assembly, but I can absolutely commit to having that conversation with my colleague as well to ensure that we're creating pathways to education. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, this is going to take me into the income assistance section. So it is absolutely one of our deliverables under or business plan to work collaboratively with the primary's department, and that would take us into working with departments as well, like housing with Minister Kuptana. Within and one of the things we talked about quite a bit today was the ability of the new income assistance program to free up some time of the client navigators within the income assistance division so that as they are working with some of our most vulnerable residents...
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this type of work has not been fully done. About 20 years ago, the GNWT undertook an initiative that aimed to better align and streamline various social programs, but that work did not continue. What we are seeing, though, right now is absolutely I agree with the Member, there needs to be an alignment of our social programming and our social services and that's why you see a lot of conversation in the 19th Assembly, and has continued into the 20th Assembly, about integrated service delivery and an acknowledgement that integrated service delivery...
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I have a headquarters number of 38. And sorry, the policy planning sorry, planning, research, and evaluation is seven.
