Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The previous speakers stole most of my thunder, but I think there might have been a couple of names that he did miss. I believe Dr. Erin Freeland Ballantyne's in the audience. She's the dean of Unbiased Activities, Research and Innovation, Dechinta Bush University. I believe Barbara Ann Blancho of Colville Lake is also in the gallery. So greetings to all the folks here from Dechinta, especially the grads on your important achievement. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Recognition of visitors in the gallery. I too would like to congratulate all the Dechinta graduates, the great work of Ms. Ballantyne, and Bishop Converione, and Chelsea Migwy. Thanks for being here with us, and also those individuals that may not have been highlighted today; thanks for being here with us. It's always great to have an audience in the gallery. Masi.

Item 6, acknowledgements. Item 7, oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today you heard from my Member's statement about the topic of change. As I said in my statement, I have some questions of the Premier to help clear up some confusion and hopefully help the residents of the NWT have a clear understanding what is happening here in this Assembly. Mr. Speaker, Cabinet decided that it was important to freeze excluded employee salaries increases and potential bonuses as part of the government's reduction plan. Mr. Speaker, can the Premier please explain to us in the public why Cabinet froze the excluded employee salary and at the same time the government continue to advertise in the paper for recruiting future workers and government. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Honourable Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What the government announced is that there would be no economic adjustments for excluded employees and this was publicly announced by the Finance Minister in February. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Premier answered part of the question, but I'll move onto my next one. Mr. Speaker, there has been conversation and rumours out in the public service and on the streets of communities that the NWT are about to potentially realign some of the departments. Can the Premier please confirm that this option has been looked at and discussed?

No decisions have been made as of yet. Possibly there could be changes. It depends on the outcomes of zero-base reviews. If there is a business case to support any amalgamations, those proposals will be reflected in the 2017-18 business plans and we'll reviewed with committees this fall, and I hope the committee will support changes that would be proposed if any at that time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Premier for his answer. I know for one I will give my hand out and am willing to work with you if it's exchanged back and forth, so I thank the Premier for that statement. Mr. Speaker, with these potential alignments of departments, will the Premier look at reducing the Cabinet size from seven to six as part of the reduction process? Thank you.

Our experience is that workload from Ministers does not significantly decrease when departments are amalgamated, and I'm not saying we're going to do that, but if we do I don’t expect there will be any changes to the number of Cabinet Ministers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Premier for his answer. Mr. Speaker, I understand and appreciate how the Premier answered the question, but can he please explain what the difference is between cabinet positions and public servant positions when we're doing reductions. If the government wants the public service to reduce their numbers, why can't we do that to show leadership on our end? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you for clarifying the position. If the business case shows that there's opportunities for increased effectiveness and efficiencies, that's where the difference comes in, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you. With the Small Community Employment Support Program, it's a program that's been around for many years. We're going to continue to do the work and focus on the training on the job as well as community initiative, provide project based on training. So training on the job has been very successful in our communities. Currently, I believe we do the program in 26 communities in the Northwest Territories. Small community is defined by any community that is less than 1,000 people.

In the 2015-16 fiscal year we had 303 NWT residents participate; 196 went through the individual training on the job, and the other 107 through group-based training opportunities just to name a few of the successes of this program. So we're going to continue in those two areas and hopefully we get more requests. There was a surplus of the funding last year and hopefully moving forward we get more people in the communities getting ready to take on some of the jobs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to ask the Minister another question on this. Mr. Speaker, has the Minister engaged other Ministers in carrying out the mandate of increasing employment in small communities specific to this particular program?

I think the program is very unique and very successful, and as I mentioned on April 20thwhen we did release the Labour Market Information and Needs Assessment and we're starting to develop the action plan that we're hoping to table in the fall session that from now until we develop that action plan we are going to be getting a lot of feedback and information all our stakeholders and that includes other departments as we move forward with the Labour Market Information Action Plan, but also utilizing the Small Community Employment Support Program as we start developing skill development in our residents.

Can the Minister advise how the Department of ECE will be allocating the small community employment program to the communities, whether project based or so much per community, just a quick word on how the funding will be allocated to the small communities.

As I mentioned, Mr. Speaker, there's 26 communities that we currently work with. The reason 26 communities is because we don’t have ECE regional office in all the communities, and the ones that are under 1,000 people, we work with them and we help them work on giving the applications to apply for this funding to support on-the-job training and support group-based activities in the community as well to develop that training. So we'll continue to work with all our communities, the 26 of them, to make sure that they have an understanding and in having questions asked in a House like this also brings some public awareness to organizations, community members who want to access the program.

Mahsi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nehde-Wiilideh.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Minister indicated that the program was underutilized, undersubscribed, so I'd like to ask the Minister if information on how to access small community programs and what type of projects that the Small Community Employment Program can be tied to has been distributed to the small communities. Thank you.

I believe our staff regional office has worked really well in the communities. One thing that I did mention here in the House earlier or last week was our employment transition office. It's the first year of the program that the pilot's taken place in and they're out in the communities talking about these kind of programs, as well as getting our residents into employment job opportunities by developing skills and getting the education that they need. The employment transition officer is just going through his first year. We're hearing a lot of great successes on it and we're going to continue to use them to promote this program in the 26 communities throughout the Northwest Territories, and we do have five ETOs currently.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.