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 very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the royalties I believe the Member is referring to are held by the federal government. I believe he's referring to those specific ones. Certainly, I'm always happy to do what I can within my role as Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Also happy to work with the department to review the initiative and point out different ideas of how we can all work together. I'm also happy to connect the Member with private institutions here in the Northwest Territories who have gone through the accreditation process of some of their programming and...
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to make an assumption that we're talking about NORTRAN based on the Member's Member statement for today. I'm certainly very happy to sit down with the Member and discuss NORTRAN specifically, for sure. Education, culture and employment definitely has a different workforce development programs and labour market programs that individuals, employers, and organizations and communities can apply for and would also be happy to specifically also work with education, culture and employment along with the Member to be able to have a conversation...
Luckily, it's the same person. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, in regards to what ITI is doing to streamline access to programs and services, we have migrated all of our funding programs under the same grants and contributions policy for consistency. We also have regional decision-making as far as our grants and contributions go. I am happy to say that a significant amount of funding flows both from ECE and ITI and also Prosper NWT across the regions, and as far as Prosper NWT is concerned, actually 83 percent of dollars from Prosper flow outside of Yellowknife. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when I was asked for meetings, I certainly was able to attend them and happy to do so, but for the most part these meetings happened between officials, because a lot of the times, the information that's being requested is operational and fairly in the weeds. People are looking to understand the cost of operating these buildings and more finer details about the infrastructure itself. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we do our best to make sure that we have an idea of, first of all, where people are at, what their goals are, and how we can support them to get there. This program is just now entering into its second year of being the new directive by Education, Culture and Employment in its current form, and that's not information that I have in front of me here, nor information that we would have had the opportunity to collect and analyze so young into the infancy of this next program. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the biggest change that occurred with the changes that were made in regard to income assistance, in regards to pathways to employment, was the ability of residents who are on income assistance to keep an increased amount of earned income, so that's -- they've increased it to $500 per adult plus 25 percent of income over that. And so what that does is it provides people a grace period to re-enter enter the workforce where they're not going to get clawbacks. And so it's a safety step for residents who are on income assistance and a critical part for...
It's not a yes or no question because I simply don't have the information on the floor of the House without having a heads-up of the question. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it's a long list but I'll keep it short in the interest of time. And I'm always happy to speak about this in more detail with the Member as well.
So as a few examples, we do mentorship sessions in all of our regional centres. Three of those happened in the Member's riding. In addition to that, we also have career development officers as well as economic development officers across the Northwest Territories. And they all came together and gathered for a conference to share ideas, share information about programs that they could take back to their regions -- I...
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, when I'm talking about competing interests in some communities, that is relevant to some of these conversations, and so that's why I've asked to make sure that all of the interested parties are on the same page before picking one over the other because I think in some instances there's an opportunity for collaboration in some of these communities. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we've certainly received interest from multiple communities in regards to the community learning centres. In some communities, the answers and the next steps have been easier than others. So, for example, if we have a community learning centre that's found in a school already and the school needs that infrastructure returned for their higher capacity, we've done that already. In other communities where there's school infrastructure improvements going on, we have maintained the presence of students in the community learning centre in order to...
