Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Debates of March 2nd, 2023
This is page numbers 5567 - 5614 of the Hansard for the 19th Assembly, 2nd Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was know.
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Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Kevin O'Reilly Frame Lake
Yeah, okay, thanks. Maybe something for the transition plan. Of course I know the last time I asked the Minister this, I think it was close to a visit, about changing the name of the facility, which seemed to be tied to actually fixing it up. So are we ever going to change the name of it? And as I understand now, there's no obstacles in the way, there's no protocol stuff, we can just change the name to something that's more reflective of northern culture and heritage. Thanks, Madam Chair.
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R.J. Simpson Hay River North
Thank you. As part of that capital process and doing those renovations, we're tying those things together. So once we begin that work, we will consult with Indigenous governments and make determinations about how to move forward with names and what those names might be. Thank you.
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Kevin O'Reilly Frame Lake
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I know we've -- you know, we're consulting on changing the name of the Stanton Legacy Hospital, or the building. You know, I'm not sure I'd even put that as high a priority as the territorial museum, but I want to encourage the department to move forward on that. And you can just put it on the engagement page, you know, and see where that takes us.
But I want to move on to -- in the last budget, the Regular MLAs worked with Cabinet to increase the funding for heritage centres across the NWT by half a million dollars. And I see that increase in here. Can someone just tell me about the uptake in the first year? Thanks, Madam Chair.
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R.J. Simpson Hay River North
Thank you. I will hand it over to one of my witnesses. But I will say that for the small organizations to receive a big chunk of money unexpectedly, it makes it difficult for them to just spend it if they didn't have a plan to spend it. In Hay River, we had, you know, the flood, and people were dealing with that, so. I don't think that it saw a significant uptake, at least not at all the centres. But for more information, I'll hand it to Mr. MacDonald. Thank you.
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Macdonald
Thank you Chair. With respect to this additional funding, one of the things that we determined was that we needed to support the various heritage centres to be able to plan to undertake any type of capital enhancements to their facilities. So in addition to the typical operational funding that we have been providing to them prior to receiving this additional funding, we've provided each of them with what we refer to as infrastructure planning funding.
So that's intended to support them, to help them come to us or to the federal government with a clear sense of what their needs are. So each of the facilities -- or each of the organizations received $50,000 over and above what we added to their regular funding. Thank you, Madam Chair.
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Kevin O'Reilly Frame Lake
Okay, thanks. Yeah, that's helpful to understand. So I think I've asked this question before maybe but GNWT has quite an extensive inventory of artwork, you know, across, you know, in different buildings. There's some in this building. There's some really cool stuff actually in the Caucus room. But I don't think we actually have an inventory of all of this artwork and some of it is of tremendous value, dollar value, not to mention heritage value. Is there an inventory of this, and what's the role of ECE in preparing an inventory?
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R.J. Simpson Hay River North
Thank you. The role of ECE is providing some expertise when it comes to the value of the pieces, perhaps even the handling of some of them. If it's discovered that this, you know, object in this office should be in a climate control facility, but we -- what we've discovered is that the GNWT's existing sort of inventory management software -- and I'm going to have to hand it to someone else to get into the details and provide exact names, but that can handle the inventory of the art. And so I believe that that work has begun. But I can hand it to Mr. MacDonald for more detail. Thank you.
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Macdonald
Thank you, Madam Chair. And the Member is correct in remembering that this was a priority, I think, of two years ago. At the time, ECE, ITI, and Department of Finance, collaborated on looking at what type of valuable art existed in the possession of various departments, what options there may be, and who roles the various departments could play to support inventory and ensuring that high-value art was protected and maintained for the future of the territory. The Department of Finance determined that their systems could encompass tracking those artifacts or those art pieces. And as the Minister said, ECE's role is, through the culture and heritage division, is to provide expertise on art that should be valued and protected and documented. Thank you, Madam Chair.
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Kevin O'Reilly Frame Lake
Thanks, Madam Chair. So yeah, I also want to recognize the work at the museum to prepare an inventory of their collection. It's available online now. You can actually see the stuff that's not on display and you can read about it. You know, it's searchable. It's a great tool. And I think that's the model we should be using maybe for a public face to the inventory that we need for all of our artwork across the system. Maybe there's some aspects of that that you wouldn't want to make accessible to the public necessarily, but it would be great to have that kind of a system. Is that what's being contemplated? And of course I can ask these of my friend the Minister of Finance when they're before us, Madam Chair, but while I've got these friends here I'd ask them. Thanks.
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R.J. Simpson Hay River North
Thank you. That is not what is being contemplated. The museum does have a site, and it's amazing the way that you can view the different pieces of art. But that is not the plan right now for all of the GNWT-owned art. At some point in the future that would be great, but it is not something that we are currently working on or envision beginning any time soon. Thank you.
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Frieda Martselos Thebacha
Thank you, Madam Chair. And I read the whole report from the language commissioner, and I was quite concerned about a couple things. One of them is that the language commissioner has said in that report that English and French are priority items within the language thing and the nine Indigenous language are kind of a second priority. That was pretty well the final -- like, some of the things that was said in that report. And I guess my concern is I'm going to -- you know, the official languages report that's coming out from government operations, I agree with it. But, you know, I've decided that I'm not going to be voting -- I'm not going to vote against it, I'm going to abstain, but for the following reasons:
Until the Indigenous languages get the same standard as the French language, you know, I just cannot vote for -- because revitalization of our languages, the Indigenous languages is extremely important to the Indigenous people of the North. And there's a lot of non-Indigenous students that are also taking some of these courses in revitalization in the South Slave. I want to commend the school boards in the South Slave for all they do to revitalize the Aboriginal languages. But I have to make sure that -- I also want to make sure that the director of languages and that department also feels the same way and helps the mandate of revitalization of Indigenous languages. And I wonder if that is going to take place in financial assistance the way it should have. And I don't see that in the entire overall budget. You know, we have French schools, and I'd like to see the day when, hopefully in my lifetime, that we have a school of Indigenous language revitalization. And I want to see how the department feels about that, Madam Chair. Thank you.
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R.J. Simpson Hay River North
Thank you. I would love to see a school of language revitalization. There are many efforts going on around the territory. I've spoken about things like the mentor apprentice program. The department has put time and resources into developing post-secondary courses related to languages and hopefully those can be implemented at some point in the future. I mean, there's a lot of ground covered in there, but we do support the revitalization of Indigenous languages. There's great efforts going towards ensuring that we are increasing the number of speakers the best we can, and we'll continue those efforts. Thank you.
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