Mr. Chairman, again, this has been identified through the venue, the forum. As you know, there are a lot of small, isolated communities that don’t have library services. They have to go to a school, but there are certain operational hours at the school. After hours, the students cannot access. They have no place to go. This is an area that is a high importance to us as well as the Education department.

Mr. Chairman, this suggestion and ideas came from the people and I feel that we need to act on it. That is part of the reason why we have identified the library services, so kids can continue reading even though they are not in school, so they can improve their academic area. Mahsi.

Mr. Chairman, I am having a hard time with the explanation. I will leave it at that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We are on page 10-17, Education and culture, operations expenditure summary, $190.945 million.

We are moving on to page 10-18, Education, Culture and Employment, activity summary, education and culture, grants and contributions, grants, $52,000.

Contributions, total grants and contributions. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wonder if the Minister could remind me what the Healthy Children Initiative Program is. Thank you.

Deputy Minister Daniels.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I understand. So if you combine the Healthy Children Initiative and the Early Childhood Program, that accounts for a large part of the early childhood development figure mentioned on page 10-17 under program delivery details at the bottom. Thank you.

Minister of Education.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. That is correct, what the Member is referring to.

Okay, page 10-19, grants and contributions, grants and contributions, continued, summary. Agree to page 10-19?

Moving on to 10-20, grants and contributions. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The first section here, NWT Arts Council, is $500,000. This is where we give money to groups that are obviously interested in producing some sort of project, whether it is music, whether it is writing or whatnot.

In this area, I know that over the years we have done a really fantastic job of putting some money into the hands of some of our artists throughout the Northwest Territories, but we haven’t always done a brilliant job of sort of collecting or recognizing what has been accomplished by these artists. For instance, we have had many CDs produced by many talented people throughout the Northwest Territories, but if we were to ask if you have a copy -- Education, Culture and Employment -- do you have that CD? Can we listen to it? Can we see what northern artists have done? There is no real compilation ever been done of all the products.

In the last couple of years, Music NWT has revitalized. They used to be an organization called, not WAMP, they were RANT and now they are Music NWT. This is an organization committed to musicians across the Northwest Territories. Has there ever been any thought of engaging an organization like Music NWT to compile all the product that has been created over the years and creating either a website or database or just a location where people can go, click in and look and listen to the high-quality product that has been produced across the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. That is something that we can look at. As you know, it is not only music, there are books that are being produced, arts and crafts, so we need to look at all venues, I guess. The money that we distributed, there is almost 40 different organizations, 40 different individuals, so we can look at those areas that the Member is referring to.

The Minister actually hit on the second part. After I talked about music, I was going to say there is a significant amount of other product. In looking at it, can the Minister commit to putting together some sort of package that is easily accessible to people so that they can see or even listen to some of the product, even maybe link to some of the artists’ websites so that more people can get a wider range of an idea of what some of our fantastic northern artists, performing artists, musicians, painters, writers, authors are doing?

We should be very proud of the product that exists and the talent that exists in the Northwest Territories. We are putting a lot of money into them right now and I think it is time that we highlight some of them and show people what is out there and what we have contributed to. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I agree with the Member that we should look at this. There are a lot of products out there that we need to showcase and I believe even Industry, Tourism and Investment travels to different sites highlighting the North. So we can work with that, even as far as updating our websites with all the links. We have information on these individuals, because obviously they submitted an application. Some of these individuals here, they are continuous individuals that apply on an annual basis. So, Mr. Chair, we will certainly work with that. Mahsi.

That’s great. Maybe if the Minister can provide me with some data on how far those records go back, because I know there’s product from three, four, five, seven, eight, nine, 10 years. It would be great to go back and capture some of the stuff we’ve done, so if the Minister can

provide me that, that would be great. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We’ll provide the information since we started that programming through the NWT Arts Council. We’ll provide that detail. Mahsi.

Thank you. At this time I’d like to recognize the clock, so I’ll rise and report progress.