Thank you, Mr. Rutland. Good afternoon, colleagues, and congratulations to you all once again on my behalf. I also want to extend my gratitude to you. I was very nervous last week, but you have all been very welcoming and it's been a really positive start.
Thank you, also, for hanging on. I am the last speaker; whether that's good fortune or bad luck, I'm not sure. The good news is we've all said a lot of similar things, so there is a lot of overlap to get started from. The bad news is that it will be sounding a bit repetitive by the time I'm done.
I also want to say thank you in this first opportunity to speak here to Yellowknife South for placing your trust in me. I began to carry that trust the morning after the election, and I can say that I promise that, every day, I'm going to make my best effort to use my best judgment, to use my best efforts to advance the work of the Assembly on behalf of Yellowknife South.
The priorities I want to talk about today took root over many months of consultation, grew and focused in the course of the campaign. It's my honour to present this vision and these priorities on behalf of Yellowknife South.
My vision is that the Northwest Territories is going to be a leader in Canada. I believe we can show leadership in reconciliation with Indigenous people, and that we can be a leader in establishing modern relationships with Indigenous governments.
I believe the Northwest Territories should be a sought-after place for investment. It's going to be built on a foundation of balance and sustainability.
I believe that the small population that we have, focused and concentrated in small regional communities, should be an opportunity. It should be an opportunity to provide individualized programs and services, focused on the needs of those communities, drawn and delivered by those communities. As such, I think the Northwest Territories can be a leader in a government that is driven by positive outcomes for its people.
After the campaign period, I am more convinced than ever that this vision is achievable because of all the people who I have met throughout the process of the campaign, the ideas that they have shared, their talents, and their dedication. Our people truly are our strength.
My priorities are focused under four themes; health, education, economy, and governance. I will start with health. In many ways, to me, that's the foundation. I have three priorities. The first is that we identify and show quantitative improvement in the social determinants of health. That means things like safe housing, food security, family well-being, and both physical and mental health.
I think we need to start seeing people as whole persons. We need to understand that the ability and the opportunity to learn requires that foundation of health, that our prosperity is going to be impacted by the web of things that impact who we are as people, form our families and our communities to our society around us.
This was a major issue in the constituency for me, because a lot of people spoke about the downtown social issues. We are not going to get ahead facing some of the social issues that we see on our streets downtown, that are playing out across the Northwest Territories, unless we have a long-term vision that truly looks at people as whole people, something that truly starts from the very earliest stages of maternal health and early childhood.
Some of the key social determinants that I'd like to highlight now. I'll start with housing. There is a shortage of housing across the continuum of housing needs; emergency housing, transitional housing, early entry housing, first-stage housing for people looking to get into the market, rental housing, and seniors' housing.
I think we need to be leveraging our partnerships with other governments, the federal government in particular, but also the private sector who are looking for opportunities, as well as with non-profits who have creative ideas and on-the-ground know-how.
I also suggest that we should be creating opportunities for collaboration between departments on this issue, because sometimes the input that is actually going to affect housing might require an input from a different department. For example, for seniors to be aging in place, often what they need is support from mental health or healthcare to provide them with part-time care in their homes.
Food security. In terms of food security, I would suggest we look at the entirety of the production and supply of food in the Northwest Territories and find a way to have a meaningful impact on local food chain supplies. There are agriculture initiatives, and there is also access to traditional food. The sustainable livelihood action plan is one that we should be looking at, to ensure that it is accurately and effectively implemented and actioned. As well, transportation. How can we innovate the transportation of food across the Northwest Territories, so that there is more reliable supply to small communities?
Healthy families. In this respect, I would focus on universal childcare. Universal childcare, to me, should be the end goal, but it doesn't mean that it's an all-or-nothing end game. We've already heard today, I believe from more than one person, why this is such an important and excellent return on investment. It's so much potential for children; it helps parents who may want to return to the workforce; it has the potential to lower the cost of living; and it makes the Northwest Territories someplace where people will want to come, that will make us potentially a unique place in all of Canada. I recognize that this was a goal during the last Assembly, but it's time to move it forward, I would suggest.
Junior kindergarten was an important step forward, but when we created that, we didn't necessarily create the option for aftercare, which left a whole other problem for families. As I have said, it's not all-or-nothing. We can prioritize the availability of childcare spaces first, and move forward gradually, perhaps in a way that uses short-term changes to the system but maintaining the end goal of universality.
The next aspect of the whole-person care approach that I am championing, I'm actually separating it out into its own priority, because it's so important. For me, priority number two under my healthcare theme is that we support positive mental health and long-term reductions in addictions, including reducing the severity of addictions. How I would suggest we do that is with post-treatment, long-term aftercare, both for addictions and mental health, one that includes relapse prevention and community-based supports.
Community-level networks are a critical aspect to ensuring that people can reintegrate successfully into their communities. I believe we should consider establishing mobile units of mental health professionals who can go regularly to the communities to shore up those local supports.
I would suggest having mental health-specific system navigators, or patient advocates, or both, so that patients and their families, the people who are already doing the care, can easily access the best services available.
I would like to see us encourage and support the community-level programs that are happening within non-profits. The Arctic Indigenous Wellness Foundation, for instance; the FOXY/SMASH programs, for example. These non-profits are doing excellent work, and when we work with our non-profits I think we should start considering looking at different ways of funding them, so it's not project-based, but we can actually look at core funding initiatives that will improve their efficiency.
I'm going to add in here restorative justice. It seems odd that I'm sticking that in under health; I suggest that it's not, but if we're going to be truly restorative for people who are in conflict with the law, I think we need to realize that, very often, these are people who are themselves traumatized and who would benefit from a healthcare, whole-person approach to healing.
Similarly for victims of crime. If we're talking about restorative processes, we must be looking at the victims of crimes, as well, and that they, too, are whole people and they, too, are in need of care and programming that is trauma-informed and culturally appropriate.
My third priority under my health theme would be that we prioritize patient-centred prevention as an approach to improve individual wellness. Two ways I would suggest we could do that; one is, again, community-level and culturally safe programming.
I'd like to see us truly empower the front lines of healthcare services, such as is already beginning in the Indigenous health units here in HSSA, as well as, again, with the Arctic Indigenous Wellness Foundation in the non-profit sector. I believe it is time to start championing these approaches and expanding them.
Also the development of wraparound, patient-centred approaches to care. This is a philosophy that already has seeds happening in the healthcare systems right now, but it is important that we ensure that we have invested enough so that healthcare professionals can truly develop those patient relationships. This will also provide a better workplace and more workplace satisfaction for healthcare professionals, and again hopefully make the Northwest Territories a destination of choice for them.
Education. Here, I have three items. Early childhood; I've already spoken about the importance of that under healthcare, but I would suggest that we should remember that you have to engage the education sector, as well, so that there is an overlap between health and education, so that there is culturally appropriate programming for young children.
From K to 12, similar to one of my colleagues, I would like to support and invest in action, the Education Renewal Initiative. This is a model that addresses many challenges faced across the Northwest Territories:
- Family engagement within schools;
- Recruitment and retention of teachers;
- Impacts of health on students;
- The need to prioritize different paths for completion of education; and
- Infrastructure challenges in many of the schools, particularly in small communities.
It focuses on the importance of ensuring that every student's capabilities and capacities are being encouraged and supported to the best of that student's ability.
This framework, however, cannot succeed on the backs of the teachers or the schools themselves alone. We must find a way to ensure that there is proper collaboration and cooperation between the health system and education, as well as infrastructure, housing, different departments to provide all the different possible services that are going to be required to truly make this initiative a success.
Finally, adult learning. I also support a Northwest Territories-based Polytechnic University. It's one that I hope is based on diverse partnerships between the communities, between different governments, with industry, other existing educational institutions such as the College nordique or the Dechinta University. I think this should be a shared priority between all. It should be a shared opportunity. In Yellowknife, having a new campus is a priority, but other communities will have other priorities, and they should, again, be all part of moving this initiative forward.
I hope that we would be including high-demand professions, nursing, social work, education, and skilled trades, but this is also an opportunity to be visionary. We can look at areas of our particular and unique strengths; rare earth, minerals, permafrost, land-based programs, and some other highlights that many of you have already mentioned today. Again, this is an opportunity to make the Northwest Territories a destination of choice.
The Economy. This is certainly something I think many of us have heard about, and I heard about at many of the doors that I was at: what will we do when the diamond mines close, and what will we do to reinvigorate our economy?
I have four priority items here. First, that we settle all land and self-government claims and ensure that existing agreements are fully implemented. I believe we need to provide land ownership certainty; we should accelerate land-use planning, and I believe in acknowledging nation-to-nation relationships. I would like to see us encourage power sharing and partnership.
The second priority is to reinvigorate the mineral resources sector. Here, there are two things I'd like to mention. One is the infrastructure gaps in transport, land, air, water; energy; communications. I'm not going to pick, because that's not my job necessarily. If I could choose, I would have them all. I hope that we can leverage partnerships, leverage funds, but maintain a goal of completing these projects and not only studying their feasibility.
The second part for me, under the mineral resource sector, is to look back, actually, to the 2014 mineral development strategy. The goals of that strategy are as alive today as they were back then:
- Create a competitive edge to improve investor confidence;
- Improve the regulatory environment;
- Enhance Indigenous engagement and community capacity;
- Promote a lasting legacy; and
- Enrich the workforce.
Those five goals are still five things that I think would not only improve the mineral resource sector, but in fact many of our economic sectors, as well. In my view, it's time to, in fact, improve the implementation of that strategy.
I will highlight just a few. Firstly, with respect to regulations and the regulatory environment, I would like to see regulations that are responsive. We have that opportunity now, because it's time to start developing the regulations for the Mineral Resources Act.
Ensure that deadlines are timely and enforceable, and as far as promoting a lasting legacy, industry is looking to have social license. Companies and corporations want to be good neighbours and investors are increasingly expecting corporations to in fact be accountable for their carbon footprints, among other social issues. I think, if we can create the conditions that allow industry to achieve those goals, again, we will be making the Northwest Territories a destination for investment.
My third priority under the economy is to support the growth, both in the number as well as in the size, of our northern-owned and operated businesses. Let's make sure they have the opportunity and the ability to scale themselves up, when appropriate. We can do this by reducing the cost of doing business, which will hopefully also lower the cost of living, because this is done through infrastructure, again. In this regard, I would highlight energy and electricity costs, and reducing the reliance on diesel, which has to be trucked up and is expensive across the Northwest Territories.
I come back again to regulatory systems. In this regard, again, responsive and modern. Considering a two-for-one rule, perhaps, where we don't layer on new regulations. Every time you have a new regulation, you must at least take one, if not another one, off.
Interdepartmental cooperation, as well. Sometimes the regulations in one area are impacting the ability to have growth in another. For example, operating a business in public housing. This, to me, seems like exactly the place where we would want to encourage small-sized businesses.
Land access. I am in support of having a plan to begin transferring lands that are already within a municipal boundary, in active consultation with Indigenous governments.
A task force to ensure that there is better procurement and contracting, so that we are keeping wage dollars in the North. There are many ways to do this, and I believe a task force could come back with options for a very quick turnaround to provide solutions.
Priority four, last one in this category: to build the foundations for a knowledge economy. The Northwest Territories is still a frontier, but I think we can harness that. A knowledge economy is more than just a Polytechnic University; it's an approach. It's an approach to an economy that is innovative, entrepreneurial, creative, where we can actually use the "get 'er done" spirit of the North and actually say that that's how we want to build the economy going forward, in terms of all of our diversification strategies.
We can support innovation with research and development funding that is scaled to the size of the businesses we have in the North, and encourage collaborative hubs. There is already an artist space up in Inuvik. I think there can be manufacturing start-up spaces elsewhere in the Northwest Territories.
I know it's the end of the day, but I'm almost done.
---Laughter
My last theme is governance, and there are two priorities here. The first is to create opportunities for communication and cooperation laterally and up and down through departments. What I mean by this: in terms of our front-line service providers, they are often the ones that know exactly the best thing to do to make a tiny change that will improve their work life, as well as the services that they are giving to people in the communities.
I think there should be regular meetings between people who are providing social programs, for example, both inside government as well as in the non-profit sector. There could similarly be, as I've already talked about, regular meetings between education and health; between justice, health, and housing; all of these different groups that are trying to solve the same problems should be having regular meetings to make sure that they are not at cross purposes, but that they are actually providing the best services together.
At a senior level, I would suggest there should be budget efficiencies, so that budgets are not overlapping; people aren't afraid of their budgets being amalgamated or clawed back, but that they can in fact work together to ensure that there is enough money to do the things that these departments all want to be achieving.
I think we can lead by example, and it's heartening that many of us have already spoken about this. We, as 19, can demonstrate the value of good communication, of collaboration, and of working together. It is a historic Assembly, but it will be even more so, depending on what happens in the next four years.
My second and last priority is to create a culture and expectation for active implementation and evaluation of all government programs and services. Our solutions should never be a process. Solutions should be measurable results that impact on people. As we set our goals and our expectations, there should be incremental performance indicators. Every step of the way, you need to be able to measure what you're doing. As you measure them, there should be a clear point of accountability, somebody responsible for the thing that they're supposed to be getting done, and someone with sufficient authority that, if it's not happening, that person has the ability and the power to make change.
I believe the Northwest Territories can be a leader, and we can be a leader in governance that is not divided by partisanship, but in fact is united behind a collective vision. It's a vision that I believe will succeed if we value action, value accountability, and I look forward to working with all of you, working together towards a collective vision. Thank you.