Shauna Morgan

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So my questions now are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. On a similar theme, so the students we spoke with yesterday noted that in the new BC curriculum, there's no specific course about climate change and its impacts on northern environments or northern people. It's left to individual teachers to find their own resources or partner with non-profits like Ecology North to incorporate that into the curriculum. So that means some NWT students might get to learn about it and some won't. Has the department of education looked at creating a made-in-the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Okay, so that is good news.

The next question is when will there be plain language materials produced about the climate change action plan and the milestones that are being reached so that ordinary residents of the territory, including young people, can read the plan and think, okay, this is speaking to me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, when people have asked me what do I think about this year's operating budget, I've been describing it as a status quo budget. The government describes it as providing stability. It reminds of a lesson I've learned while paddling some of the beautiful rivers of the Northwest Territories, especially whitewater rivers. So when you're in turbulent waters and the boat feels like it's about to tip, your instinct is to grab the gunnels of the boat and to try to stabilize yourself. But the problem is that that doesn't work and sometimes it makes you even more unstable. You can't control...

Okay, thank you to the Minister for that response, and I do think we should follow up in our direct meeting with Aurora College.

Does the Minister have an idea of what we should expect to see in terms of value for money for that extra half a million? I know in total, Aurora College transformation in the last fiscal year it was just over a million but Regular Members lobbied for, you know, bumping it up from what it had been budgeted for because we have said over and over again that the Aurora College transformation is important. Does the Minister even know what we're -- what we should expect to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. It does make sense, and I look forward to sort of further conversations with the Minister and colleagues to -- for us to brainstorm and find pathways forward to, you know, find more journey persons to take on apprentices, find more employers. And I should clarify too that when I was talking about moving from 5 to 6, so there's more SNAP student participants in that but it's that there were 5 SNAP students registered as apprentices, and then it's gone to now 6 registered apprentices.

My last question, so also another big highlight in the business plan which I know the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. And so just to confirm, so the next one down the list, the workforce development agreement which also provides grants for both individuals and employers to help with training supports, employment partnerships, can the Minister confirm whether that one is fully subscribed or that's also still an aspiration or goal to actually spend all that money? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I wanted to first zero in on the labour market programs, and looking at the goal that has been set out in the business plan to increase -- let me just bring up the business plan -- to maintain or increase the uptake. And so I notice that so far between 2022-2023 and then the following year 2023-2024, in fact there was a decrease in the number of clients and the number of employers that were participating in the labour market programs. Fairly significant, so from 188 to 156 clients in 2023-2024, and then from 71 to 63 employers. I also note that there was a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to express my concern today about the well-being of the children in this territory, specifically those involved with child and family services. I've been waiting to speak about this until I felt I had solid solutions to propose, but this is a tough one. That might be one reason that no one particularly likes to talk about this. It's depressing, it makes us feel hopeless, and it's easy to ignore because these children are not the ones emailing and calling our constituency offices, and yet these are likely the most vulnerable of our community members...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do look forward to that bigger conversation. I think it's quite urgent. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. How many operational detox beds do we have -- well, how many detox beds do we have operational at the moment? Thank you, Mr. Chair.