Thank you, Minister of Housing NWT. Oral questions. Member from Mackenzie Delta.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As you know from all my previous Member's statements, I've always advocated for community-based programs that will benefit the community. This is no different. I want the best outcome for communities of the Mackenzie Delta.

I would like to know if the Minister or her department has had any discussions with the Indigenous governments, with either Aklavik, Fort McPherson, Tsiigehtchic, in reference to collaborating to renovate vacant units within their respective communities? Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Mackenzie Delta. The Minister for Housing NWT.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question. Housing NWT has not had direct discussions with community governments at this time in Fort McPherson, Aklavik, or Tsiigehtchic. We have had regional discussions with Indigenous governments but no specific discussions at this time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I always, you know, want the best for the communities and dealing directly with communities rather than regional is my preference. Does the Minister or her department know how much vacant units are in each of the communities that can be renovated and occupied as soon as possible in the Mackenzie Delta? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And with the reference to working directly with community governments, we can do that. We can talk, and we can have discussions.

In terms of vacant units and those that could be renovated and have a move-in phase, I mean, we can look at that and provide those numbers to the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister. Will the Minister look at working with the Indigenous governments and provide some financial resources to renovate some of these vacant units so some of these residents can have homes with their families?

Mr. Speaker, at this time I think that we'd be willing to work with anyone interested in advancing housing in the Northwest Territories. So if a local Indigenous government is willing to talk to us, meet with us, they have ideas, of course we'd be willing to work together. We do have some SEED money that we can partner with to look at potential federal funds, so we're willing to do that. So thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister for Housing NWT. Final supplementary. Member from Mackenzie Delta.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That's great news. Can the Minister look at working with other departments, such as Education, Culture and Employment, to create projects where we can train some of our residents to gain work experience and at the same time provide them much needed housing within our communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of education could take this question as well. She's a big part of it, and she's the one advancing the work with the other departments.

But, yes, this is something that we talk about often, how we can work together as departments, looking at bringing in advancing capacity, looking at more apprenticeships throughout the North, and just the entire labour workforce, how we can help boost that -- the workforce throughout the North. So, yes, we're willing to do that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Minister for Housing NWT. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

My first question is does the Minister have any idea what currently is the rate of functional literacy amongst adults in the NWT?

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for raising this. And, unfortunately, ECE does not have this type of data. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So does the government have any plans to conduct a new survey amongst adults to find out what literacy levels actually are? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in 2012 was the first program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies Literacy Survey. And the second such survey, in order to provide kind of the second baseline of what that would look like, was launched in 2022. Unfortunately, at that time it was identified that it would cost around $5 million for the territories across Canada to participate in that survey. So the three territories did not participate in the survey. And currently CMEC, along with Statistics Canada and the organization for economic cooperation and development and the three territories, are looking at other options to obtain this data, including the use of potentially an online version of this testing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So in terms of children in our school system, does ECE monitor literacy levels amongst any or all of the grade levels to track trends over time to see if it's getting better or worse? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, through our Alberta curriculum, when we were working with Alberta on all of our curriculum across the territory, ECE monitored literacy levels through the annual administration of the Alberta achievement tests. Those tests were done in, I believe, grade 6 and grade 9, so that we would have kind of a baseline and then you would follow students and be able to test them again and see where they were at. And those began in 2007.

With our transition to BC, we will eventually have the BC foundational skills assessments across grades 4 and 7 and graduation assessments across grade 10 and 12, which will assess student achievement and literacy and numeracy as well.

So one of the things that I think is important here is our Alberta achievement testing data trends showed little change over time and that contributed to our decision as well to switch to the BC curriculum. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary. Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So beyond switching to the BC curriculum, does the department have a plan to improve literacy amongst our NWT students? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, currently all of our regional district education councils and district education authorities each have their own literacy programs that they employ within their schools. In addition to that, our NWT adapted curriculum, through our English language arts curriculum, is also conducive to pedagogy for learning to read for our NWT students as well. ECE does plan to transition the adapted NWT version to BC's school curriculum and the implementation of BC's large-scale assessment tools as well. And these will be an integral part of improving student learning for the Northwest Territories. And so it allows us to really encourage deeper learning among students, and a lot of the success of that is based on project-based learning, which we know that students thrive in. And so I'm really excited to see the full kind of conversion to BC curriculum for all NWT students. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member for Monfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, changes to income assistance are on the way, but changes could happen now to improve the lives of NWT residents.

Will the Minister provide a ministerial directive that ensures ECE staff reduce the burden on clients by taking all measures to obtain the financial information that they have access to on behalf of clients? Thank you.