Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on my statement to the -- my questions are directed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Thinking and looking outside the box there, my first question to the Minister would be is the Minister willing to support and have discussions on forming a delegation to have a strategy session in Norman Wells? She may have ideas. We may even have ideas on the list of delegation. Would the Minister support that delegation selection?
Thank you, Member from the Sahtu. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
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 about what NORTRAN ultimately is, what programs could be applied for in order to fund parts of it, and go from there. Thank you
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for that reply. Yes, my questions are a follow-up to NORTRAN. I see a lot of value in divesting into NORTRAN.
Would the Minister look at funding commitments to offset the travel costs of this delegation that could be minimized by utilizing the winter road season. Mahsi.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm very happy to sit down with the Member. I'm very happy to meet over Teams, but travelling with a large contingency of people is not something that education, culture and employment has funds for. We try to do as much as we can virtually so that we can ensure that funding for programs go into communities, go into schools, and go to the residents of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary. Member from the Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister here. My last question is ultimately our goal is to seek O and M support, NORTRAN. Would the Minister assist in coordinating the developments of this action plan to seek federal engagements for redirecting some of the royalties back into the O and M of NORTRAN. Thank you.
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 certainly happy to also connect the Member with the chair of Aurora College's board of governors who certainly has an interest in the trades and trade development across the Northwest Territories. So happy to work together with the Member to make some good partnership connections and also connections to both workforce development programs that can be applied for and even SEED programs that have been used for business plan development as well. Thank you.
Oral questions. Member from Frame Lake.
