Thank you. I'm going to go to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't -- I don't have the level of detail of what the services are being provided in all of the Deh Cho communities, but we can look at what services aren't provided right now and get back to the Member. And if there are concerns or, you know, as we're rolling out more and more communities that have the needs and if there is a needs assessment that needs to be done in those communities, you know, I -- like I said, I don't have that kind of level of detail here. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from the Deh Cho.

Thank you. That's all I have for now, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there any further questions from Members? Okay. Before we -- the Member I have is from Monfwi but before we go to her, let's take a 30-minute break unless your question? You're going to use the full ten minutes? Okay, the food's there. We'll take a 30-minute break.

What do you want to do, you want to continue? Minister?

We're coming to the tail end of this document here. And the food is ready. We'll have a quick supper and we'll come right back and conclude this. We'll stop there. 30 minutes. Thank you.

---SHORT RECESS

Thank you. We just had a short supper break. And I hope the translators had a chance to have something to eat as well. And we're good to go. Okay, we're going to continue on.

Just so it's clear, we're still on pages 186 to 194 and taking questions. I had Monfwi on here, but I think she's not back yet. But is there any other Members that have questions on pages 186 to 194 to the Minister?

Okay, Monfwi MLA Member is not here. I'll just continue on. I see no further questions from Members.

Committee, I will now call the departmental summary. Health and Social Services, operations expenditures, total department, 2024-2025 Main Estimates $644,228,000. Does the committee agree?

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.

Mr. Chair, I move that this committee defer the further consideration of the main estimates for the Department of Health and Social Services at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried. Consideration of the Department of Health and Social Services, operations expenditures, 2024-2025 Main Estimates, total department, is deferred.

---Carried

Thank you, Minister, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing before us. Sergeant-at-arms, please escort the witnesses from the Chamber.

Thank you, we'll continue on. Order. Anyways, we'll continue.

Committee, we have agreed to consider Tabled Document 93-20(1), 2024-2025 Main Estimates. We will now consider the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.

Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, please proceed with our opening remarks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to present the 2024-2025 Main Estimates for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Overall, the department's estimates propose a decrease of $9.858 million or 2.6 percent over the 2023-2024 Main Estimates. These estimates support the mandate objectives for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment while continuing to meet the GNWT's fiscal objectives to prioritize responsible and strategic spending.

Highlights of these proposed estimates include:

• Forced growth funding of $484,000 to support the increased demand in the senior citizens supplementary benefit and increased lease costs of the Aurora College North Slave Campus;
• Initiative funding of $2.599 million to support the early learning and child care system in the NWT through funding from the Government of Canada;
• Transfers of $1.228 million from the Department of Health and Social Services to support the redesign of the child and youth counselling program;
• Sunsets of $4.485 million which are comprised of sunsets of one-time federal funding for Building Skills 4 Success in the NWT program and complementary funding for Minority Language Education and Second Language Instruction and funding for the Education Renewal and Innovative Initiative and Education Act Modernization Initiative;
• Other adjustments of $2.993 million for budget enhancements for Technology Service Centre Chargebacks; revised cash flow of federal funding for the Aurora College Transformation initiative; and one-time federal funding for three initiatives: The North Slave Regional Training Partnership, the Implementation of the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, and the Memorandum of Understanding with the Canada Council for the Arts;
• An increase in the amortization budget of $313,000; and,
• Reductions of $12.99 million to support fiscal sustainability. These reductions span all activities of the department and include $280,000 under corporate management, $160,000 under early learning, $8.604 million under education, $547,000 under income security, $1.509 million under labour development and standards; and, $1.890 million under languages and culture.

These estimates support the priorities of the 20th Legislative Assembly and vision of Budget 2024, by:

• supporting the mandate commitment to collaborate with Indigenous governments and residents to achieve the objectives of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by engaging with Indigenous governments through the NWT Council of Leaders Secretariat and education partners on customizations and modernizations to the NWT Education Act. Recognizing and supporting the unique educational governance circumstances of the NWT, and doing so in partnership is critical foundational work necessary to create an education system that works for NWT students and families.
• growing and enhancing the northern workforce by investing in skill development and by attracting skilled workers to the NWT. Our area of focus is supporting the NWT's early childhood education workforce by offering more professional development opportunities, continuing to provide for early learning and child care scholarships and, importantly, implementing an early childhood educator certification process. This certification process is an important step in recognizing and encouraging the value of training and experience for early childhood educators who provide care and learning opportunities to our youngest residents. Moving forward, it will support the department in providing wage increases to early childhood educators for increased training and experience and help to decrease the wage gap between early childhood educators and other educators in the NWT.
• working with NWT educators and education bodies to adapt to the British Columbia junior kindergarten to Grade 12 curriculum for use in NWT schools. This redesigned curriculum aims to personalize learning, making it more student-centered, flexible, and focused on literacy and numeracy skills, with an emphasis on deep, active learning to best prepare NWT students for their future.
• supporting the GNWT's Fiscal Strategy by focusing efforts on ensuring reductions would not impact the NWT's most vulnerable residents. This includes NWT residents accessing income assistance, and programming aimed at supporting the early learning and child care sector. ECE reductions will instead focus on transitioning in-person training to virtual sessions and reducing or eliminating underspent budget areas.
• ECE will also focus on improving program delivery efficiency through reviews of the Northern Distance Learning Program, Inclusive Schooling Ministerial Directive, and the Territorial Support Team service.

That concludes my opening remarks, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you. Does the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment wish to bring a witness into the House?

I do.

Sergeant-at-arms, please escort the witness into the Chamber. Thank you. Minister, please introduce your witnesses.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, on my left I have Mr. Jamie Fulford. And on my right, I have Ms. Catherine McDonald.

Thank you. I will now open the floor for general comments on the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Do any Members have general comments? I'm going to go to the Member from Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Overall, I definitely appreciate that the department seems to have gone through with a fine tooth comb looking for reductions and efficiencies to be found, and some of them seem to make sense. But what I am struggling to see is a clear vision for what we are trying to achieve besides saving money and being more efficient. And the message that comes out to me is that we're committing to do more with less. You know, we're shaving off here and there, we're making do, we're doing more with less, which could be possible, but my main concern is that we actually know what we're doing and we're committed to doing it better, particularly when it comes to education, labour force development, apprenticeships, skills development. You know, we've seen in the business plans in this budget that the plan over the next four years is to review the northern distance learning program, the inclusive schooling directive, the adult literacy programs, but with the goal of looking for efficiencies. And I'm wondering what is the vision that we're actually trying to achieve?

And I know that the Minister has been a strong advocate for education, particularly JK to 12 education, and equitable access to education and support services throughout her time in this building. So I wonder if she could explain what is the narrative that you want us to get out of this budget in terms of what we're hoping to accomplish in the next year with this budget, especially in terms of education, labour force development, skill development?

Thank you. For general comments, I'll go to the Minister.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And, Mr. Chair, I appreciate the comments of the Member. And I'd say one of the crucial things -- or comment that the Member made that really struck me was his comments around know what we are doing and commit to doing it better and know what we're doing with our dollars. And one of the things that we really focused on when we were going through and looking at ways that we could get creative with our budgeting was looking at the dollars that we were not spending, and so that gave us the opportunity to actually kind of trim the fat off the top, if you will, to make sure that when we are spending dollars, that we know what we're spending them on at the end of the day and that we can be more purposeful with how we spend dollars within the Department of education. One of the conversations as a whole of government is how do we want to spend dollars on new initiatives. And we need dollars in order to be able to turn those into new initiatives. And so I think that's where knowing what we are doing with our dollars is really important and being very purposeful with them.

As far as the question around, you know, what would I like to be remembered by or this budget remembered by for having kind of our collective stamp on it is I think it's really important that we put systems in place that live on -- beyond us as politicians so that it is not a band-aid fix or a temporary fix. It only looks at a four -- in this case three-year kind of mandate but is something that will continue to serve residents when -- you know, when we are no longer the ones in this building and a fresh and eager set of politicians come in and continue on the good working kind of foundation that we as a team are putting together. And so what I am looking at these days -- and I talked a lot about it today -- is pathways to employment, pathways to education, pathways to entrepreneurship when it comes to income assistance. But that also, in my heart, extends to education and how we are making sure that we are creating systems and support networks that also empower our youth to see themselves in those pathways to know they exist and to know that it is possible for them. And so I would say that for me, it's about being creative and making sure that we are creating accessible pathways for all residents of the territories and for them to see themselves in it. And I don't think that you need to necessarily in every turn have millions of dollars to be able to do that. I think sometimes it's looking at how we work. But absolutely, there are times where we do need an investment of dollars. And hopefully through this exercise, we'll be able to have those. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to go to the Member from Yellowknife North on general comments.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't have any more comments at this point. I certainly have questions and comments throughout but that was -- that's enough for the general comments. Thank you.