Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect. Today before we get started, I'd like to welcome to the House, my mayor of Tuktoyaktuk and my deputy mayor, Mayor Merven Gruben, deputy mayor Erwin Elias. Former Member Mr. Nakimayak, welcome to the House. My wife and my son Joseph, it's good to have you guys here and everybody here.

Mr. Speaker-elect, as you are aware, this Legislative Assembly has 11 official languages in the territory, some strong and some not so strong, and we're losing our languages, especially in the riding where I am from, of Siglitun, Inuvialuktun, and Inuinnaqtun, Mr. Speaker-elect, and even the Gwich'in Nation is losing our language. In this government, this 19^th Legislative Assembly, what are we going to do to promote and preserve our languages and the culture and way of life? It's time to take action and less talk. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. Now, we have Mr. Lafferty.

Masi, Speaker-elect. [Translation] Our language and culture is very important to us. It identifies who we are. The question that is posed to us, if we were to look at our languages, we talked about this as one of the priorities of the 19^th Assembly, the 19 Members. We need to put that forward and make it stronger. We have all departments, and, if we take a look at our languages, it seems like it is under education but at the bottom of the list. I think it should be a different department for language, culture, and heritage. There are a lot of people who are advocating for that, and they are saying that we should make this as a priority and create its own department. Even our elders are in support of this. If we were to create a different department, I think it would be very important. If we had that as a separate portfolio of the government, the federal government would take us more seriously. We have all these official languages, and the more we use our language, they would listen. When they look at us, they look at the Department of Education, and language doesn't seem to be a priority in Department of Education. I think we have to have our people use the language and to practise their culture. I think it's important that maybe we create our own portfolio. I think it will get stronger once we do that. As Dene people, Dene leadership would be very happy if we did that. It is their priority that we want to push forward. That's what they want us to do. Masi [translation ends].

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Next, we have Ms. Cochrane.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect. Language is culture. Language is important. As a Métis woman, I realize my family down in Paddle Prairie lost their language. They don't even know which language they speak anymore. They are desperately trying to regain language. I don't want to get there. I don't want to be a population of people who are struggling to find out who we are, to figure out what our language is. We have one of the strongest jurisdictions in the whole of Canada in our languages, but we are quickly losing them, so it has to be a priority. I believe language is more than culture. It's about self-esteem. When you can speak your language and you feel proud in what you speak, it makes you feel proud as a person. Taking away your language is one more chip to making people feel bad about themselves and to taking away a society.

Currently, the federal government does give the Government of the Northwest Territories money for language preservation and revitalization. We are doing some good work. We have money going into the education system. Some schools are bringing elders into their schools, taking children on the land. We're working within our whole government departments to actually have access so that those 11 languages aren't available just when we have the appropriate translators in the House, which I appreciate, but also when anyone phones to any government building, that they'll be able to speak their first language and actually get services. That's critical, but the key is there's also money that we give to the Indigenous governments.

I'm careful to say this because I see that it's important that we have money for schools to be able to promote it and that we have money to promote the GNWT for access to services, but I believe in my heart that the strongest way of retaining and revitalizing the languages is giving it to the Indigenous governments and letting them use the money to preserve. It is their language, and they know what they're doing, so I think that the best thing to do is again to sit down with them and talk to them and say, "This is what we're using the money for. Is it the right way? Is it not?" and letting them take the lead. It's no longer appropriate for the GNWT to tell them how we will preserve their language and revitalize it. It's time for them to tell us what they want to do so that they can preserve their own culture and their own language. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect.

Thank you, Ms. Cochrane. Next, we have Mr. Simpson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect. These consensus government leaders' debates can get a little boring sometimes because often we're all on the same page and often we're all saying the same thing. We all recognize the importance of language.

Being in this House for the last four years, I've seen the growth of the use of language, and it's inspiring. I think that we need to see that across the territory, and I agree that we need to do a better job partnering with Indigenous governments, giving them the lead, perhaps, in this. We need to better raise our profile so that, when we go to the federal government, we can get more of those funds. Language isn't just a way to communicate. It's culture. If you have a stronger connection to your culture, you have better mental health outcomes, better education outcomes. If we are teaching children multiple languages when they're young, that does wonders for them. I know in Hay River, they attempted an intensive Dene Yatie program to complement their intensive French program, but they couldn't get the instructors to do 80 percent of the course load in Dene that they needed. We need to do more in order to do better. I've heard good ideas around the table here, and, going forward, I'd be happy to work with everyone and implement those.

Personally, I have a connection to this, as well, because my grandpa spoke Cree, Chip, English, and French. I spoke a little bit of French in high school, but right now, I'm just English, so I see how quickly how all of that can be lost, and we need to take action. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect.

Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Next, we have, Ms. Martselos.

Preservation of the Aboriginal languages is extremely important. I know the territorial government has done some great things because we were recipient of some of those things that were handed down. I know both schools in Fort Smith have access to both languages. Also the Head Start program, we teach some parts of that with the Aboriginal language. I think it's extremely important, though, that we do more than that. In my idea of the polytechnic university/university of the North, I think that there should be different sections to that. The climate change and all that thing with the erosion of the shoreline in Tuktoyaktuk and the warming of the ocean in the Arctic, there should be a special department that is made up in Inuvik.

In Yellowknife, I feel, because we have the hospital here, that the medical centre should be situated here. We should be training our nurses. We should be training our technicians. We should be training our x-ray technicians. That should be our medical centre. The one in Fort Smith should be the place where a lot of the Aboriginal languages are studied, and the holistic approach to medicine could be in that place, also, the more cultural area for our people of the North, so that we preserve the languages.

I have lost my language. My father spoke Chipewyan, both my mother and my father, but they did not teach it to any of us, because it was a barrier to doing well in school in those days. I graduated without learning to speak my language, and I am sure it is a regret today. My parents both passed away, but I know that it is an extremely important part. The more languages you speak, the better it is. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Martselos. Next, we have Ms. Cleveland.

Thank you, Ms. Cleveland. First on our list, we have Ms. Martselos.

That is a great question. I am very labour-friendly. I have always been very labour-friendly, because it is the people all through the ladder who do the work to ensure that the Northwest Territories moves forward.

I will listen. I will ensure that good decisions are made for both the government and for labour. I will always ensure that we don't have so many barriers, that we are able to sit across the table and mediate properly and in good faith. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Martselos. Next, we have Mr. Lafferty.

Masi, Mr. Speaker-elect. This is an area that we have gone through in government for quite some time now. Collective bargaining is always at the Cabinet table. It is very important that we look at and re-evaluate how we approach this. It is our community staff, community employees, and contractors. Those are discussions that, obviously, we are going to be having. I, for one, would like to have engagement with the union representatives and hear their perspectives, where they are coming from, and what their wish list is, basically, but we have to keep in mind that we have to educate them as well, that "our fiscal reality is this," and obviously, we need to compromise somehow.

As Ms. Cleveland alluded to, how can we be successful moving forward? If we have an open communication dialogue constantly, I believe that we can achieve that goal. Maybe not everybody will come to an agreement, but at the end of the day, I would like to see us moving forward to benefit the communities, the region, and the Northwest Territories as a whole, for our staff, our employees, and our contractors at a community level under the union representatives. I feel that we need to have the communication dialogue constantly going.

There has been a breakdown of communication in the past for various reasons, but at the same time, in order to achieve our goal, in order to finalize our deal, similar to land claims, let's meet. Let's constantly put it on the table and try to work on an agreement. We have done that in the past, and I believe that we can build on the relationship that we have and make it even stronger. Masi, Mr. Speaker-elect.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Next, we have Ms. Cochrane.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect. I was on the Cabinet for the last collective bargaining with the union, and that was not a pleasant experience. I certainly don't recommend that anyone who puts their name for Cabinet forget what we experienced in the last Assembly. We need to learn from our mistakes. I was also, I believe, the only MLA that, after the fact, put on Facebook that we need to change this.

My understanding is that this went on for years and years. This is not okay. It is not okay that the union and the GNWT make this a personal battle between each other, because the victims are the people who are providing the services. They are the ones that we can't forget.

I put on my Facebook, and I am open to working with standing committee on it, because I'm not the expert on it, that we need to find a solution. That was on my Facebook a couple of years ago when that all went down, over a year ago, I believe it is. It has been fast; life goes fast.

We need to look at our Public Service Act. Right now, the Public Service Act says that we have the right to go into negotiation and mediation. It does not have the right to go into binding arbitration. When the motion was made, if it had said binding mediation, we could have stood up, because that is within the act. If binding arbitration is something that the people want, then we should be willing to put it back on, but not compromising by saying, "Take away the strike vote," because that's punitive. We need to work with that.

I also believe, in the Public Service Act, that we need to have timelines. Again, I am open to feedback on that, because I am not the expert on this, but it is not okay, what we are doing. Let's put a timeline. People should not have to wait years and years to get through each process. There should be a timeline: negotiation is this long at maximum, and then it moves to the next step, that long maximum, then it move to the next step. I don't usually like to be punitive, but maybe we need to look at consequences if the union and the GNWT do not meet those timelines and do not do that.

We need to start in good faith and move forward, but we can't forget that these are people's lives. I got calls during that time, and it broke my heart, of people crying and saying, "If I don't have a paycheque, I can't feed my children," and that stays with me forever. This should not be an adversarial process. We need to work. We need to make it better, and it cannot be lip service. We need to look at our act and figure out how we can strengthen it so that we have the best interests of our employees always. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect.

Thank you, Ms. Cochrane. Next, we have Mr. Simpson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect. The thing that we need to do, I believe, is improve our relationship as the elected Members with the public service. We need to show respect to the public service, and we need to listen to their concerns so that they don't get dealt with during contract negotiations. That is the worst time to try to deal with everyday concerns.

That is why I talk about things like having some sort of a feedback loop, where these frontline concerns that people are talking about for years on end actually get dealt with. A lot of times, the complaints are things related to mental health. We heard them talk about that in the contract negotiations. Well, if you are listening to people, and you are improving the situation on an ongoing basis, those don't become concerns.

We need to do a better job with the timing of these meetings. I thought that I was an idiot because I would look at these meeting schedules and see months in between them. I thought, "Oh, I guess that's how negotiations go. It doesn't make any sense to me, but these guys must know what they're doing." No. You can't wait six months between meetings. You need to be at the table and hammer something out.

I know that there are practical issues, but we have to get over that. We almost had a strike here. There were businesses around the territory that were hurting. There were people who didn't go travel to see their families, because they didn't know if they were going to be able to afford it. These are real life issues.

The other thing that we need to do is have better communications amongst ourselves during negotiations, because as a Regular Member in the last Assembly, I didn't know what was going on until basically the eleventh hour when we got a briefing, maybe two briefings, during that entire time. Again, the Regular Members need to be able to provide feedback and show the public service that, as the elected Members, we are all concerned about this issue.

Those are some of the changes that need to happen because not only does no one want that to happen again, but we can't have it happen again. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect.

Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Next on our questions, we have Mr. Norn.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect, on being acclaimed again.

I just wanted to start off by recognizing someone in the gallery, Mr. Tom Beaulieu, who was in my seat here for several years, many years in the public service, Housing as a Minister and as a Regular Member. On behalf of the world, I want to say a big mahsi cho for your service.

I want to start off just making a quick comment, and, just to make sure that my question is fairly simple, I will give you some context. I have spoken with a lot of my constituents about their interactions with the government. One common theme I seem to hear is, "Oh, you know, we always seem to run into barriers. We always seem to run into red tape. There are always these obstacles." What I mean by that is, if you are a small business, there is something going wrong with the BIP policy; if you are a struggling single mom who wants to get into housing, you have some policy that is blocking your way to get into your home; or, if you are a job applicant who has earned the way and worked really hard to get an education, you still can't get a job within our government ranks, affirmative action. Early on here, we had some discussions about our policy and policy restructuring, so my question to the Premier-candidates is: of these three policies I mentioned, BIP, affirmative action, and housing policies, what do you feel needs immediate attention in this 19^th Assembly? Mahsi cho.

Thank you, Mr. Norn. First, we have Mr. Simpson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect. I didn't quite catch the end of it, but I think my comment on these policies and what needs to be changed, basically, the Member is correct. There is a lot of red tape. One of my biggest concerns with service delivery is the service delivery. There seems to be a default to "no." When there is an issue and someone needs help, the default answer is "no" when it should be, "How can we help? You know, how can we get to the answer?" Yes, there are policies in place and we need to be accountable, so we need to follow those policies, but there are ways to get things done. We have to remember we are in the customer-service business. From the top down, I have noticed there seems to be this notion that the government isn't necessarily there to serve the people. It's sort of attitude of "We are doing you a favour," and we need to change that mentality. It has to happen right from the top down, and that goes across all policies.

We have housing policies. Sometimes, people can't get into houses because there are just not enough houses. You know, in Hay River, we just don't have places to put people right now, so that is one barrier and that one I understand, but, if it is something where everyone who is looking at the situation says, "This doesn't make sense," there should be a way to rectify the situation. We shouldn't just say, "Nope, that is what the policy says," and then move on. That goes for everything.

I have a minute here to talk about affirmative action and the Business Incentive Policy, and I am not going to be able to touch on them, basically, the way that they need to be, but it has been acknowledged that those policies need to be looked at. We need to make sure that they are serving their purpose. For a long time, according to a lot of people, they haven't been. It has been clear from what I have heard in the public and from the Members here that we need to re-examine those.

You know, if I am Premier, I will do what I can in that role to ensure that not just those policies are looked at but policies across the territory have a focus on service delivery and customer service. That is one of the reasons that I am actually running, is because the Premier's position is the one who gives the mandate letters to the deputy ministers and to the Ministers. Mandating a better customer service is something that the Premier can do, and that is my plan. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect.

Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Next, we have Ms. Martselos.