Kate Reid

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to help people who want to make NWT their home. And who can blame them? It's one of the best places on earth as far as I can tell.

Since 2009, our nominee program has supported over 1100 foreign nationals and over 660 of their dependants in accessing permanent residence from the federal government. Since its inception, over 200 different NWT employers have accessed the nominee program to assist them in filling their workforce needs in every region of our territory.

Mr. Speaker, our territory has a tremendous amount of hard-to-fill roles. From a purely...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for that. So maybe my request to the Minister could be to sort of get a fulsome picture of what the security breakdown looks like for units both owned and leased in Yellowknife. Thank you, Madam Chair.

And I guess I have one final question sort of for this section while I still have time on the clock which is it's much more of a larger territorial scope question, but could Housing NWT advise as to how many new units they anticipate to enter their stock by the end of the Assembly. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, no, that's great to hear, and it's increasing. As the Minister knows, there are security concerns in a lot of rental units that are in my riding in Yellowknife at large, and it's good that Housing NWT is working on that particular item. I'm hoping that maybe the department or Housing NWT, I should say, could return with a detailed breakdown for Members at a later time. But I'll leave that there for now.

When it comes to the units that they rent, is there not a removal of security coverage for public housing tenants in private properties that they rent in...

Thank you, Madam Chair. And just one final question. In both -- in the main estimates on page 59, both culture and heritage and Indigenous language secretariat, both have seen a reduction since the 2023-2024 actuals, and I was just wondering if we could get an explanation or substantiation of that. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for that clarity. And thank you, Madam Chair. On page -- sorry, there's two page numbers on this, 36 or 38, I apologize. But it's in our business plan policy initiatives, speaking to Indigenous language service standards. I realize those standards, I believe, have been released recently, which is fantastic news. But I am curious what monitoring and evaluation plan for review of that rollout, what benchmarks the standards are meant to reach. Is there an available documentation of any monitoring or evaluation that might be occurring for these service standards? Thank you, Madam...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few questions for this section. In business plan, page 28 for the Minister, it speaks to ECE's desire to include heritage resources in emergency planning. So I note that ECE has updated its business continuity plan. But could the Minister explain if this is just for GNWT assets, or is the department working to support other cultural organizations that it provides financial assistance to? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And, yeah, specifically, I'm interested in the action under access to health care, continue to promote this program as a tool to attract internationally trained health and social service professionals to the NWT.

Madam Chair, will the Minister have anything to pivot to that she is aware of to help us seek out those health professionals in any federal discussions she's had so far? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you please clarify if this is where I can ask questions about the NWT nomination program? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I know the Minister has heard a lot about what our smaller communities are needing for income support, and I'm listening to them too. So in her reply to the Member from Mackenzie Delta, she was talking about market basket measures. And it's a tricky equation to solve for, but I'm thinking if we want to get more people off of income support, we want to have more opportunities for them to get into jobs. And so that ties into my thinking around ECE's annual survey that just went out around the minimum wage.

So the minimum wage in the NWT -- and this is in your...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to my colleagues for raising NGO issues. I'll be asking the Premier some questions about that as well.

So I believe it was last week or the previous week a public service announcement went out about what steps EIA is taking to support the NGO sector, and in that effort they outline some of the steps they'll be taking, and they referenced the strengthening non-profit and charitable sector external advisory committee report. So that report is something that many constituents have reached out to me about in the past. In that report, though, there are specific...