Thank you, Madam Chair. As to what actions or commitments has the Minister made to these organizations? Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you very much. Our commitment was to relaunch the program after hearing from them. So we listened to them. We took into account their perspectives and relaunched the program. Madam Chair, there was no commitments made at the the meeting because, of course, needed to ensure that we were weighing all of the facts and balancing everything out and putting together a program at the end of the day that we felt was fair. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to the Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Was the program relaunching itself, or did it take some intervention by the department and the Minister? Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.

Yes. Can I ask him to -- okay, I'll go back to the Member for Yellowknife Centre.

In essence, was the program going to relaunch itself, or did it take some intervention from the Minister to relaunch it?

Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.

Well, certainly, no program from the GNWT launches itself. There's always a concerted effort behind it, Madam Chair. It was end of day back in January when we learned of our -- a drastic cut to our allocation numbers of the nominee program from the federal government. Unfortunately for the deputy minister, he's been very gracious in giving me his contact numbers, so I was immediately on the phone with him. I asked for the program to be immediately paused. That was a political decision. I did not feel that we could in good faith launch a program within 12 hours that it's so drastically changed. Following that, I asked for officials to meet with CDETNO and the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce as well as the NWT Chamber of Commerce. Given the feedback and perspectives received there, we were then able to redesign the program, keeping in mind our new allocation of nominee program candidates or allotments. And then from there, we made a -- I made a commitment on the floor of the House to Members here and to residents that they would have time with the new parameters of the program before we relaunched it. So that is what we have given to people as of Friday, and the program will relaunch this week. It will be open for one week in order to give people an opportunity to get their applications in. I did feel that it was important that we give people that time because as we know, technology sometimes doesn't always work the way we want it to. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you. I'll go to the Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Was the lottery concept part of the redesign by the department? Thank you.

Thank you. I'll ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Yes, that was part of the redesign.

Thank you. I'll go to the Member for Yellowknife Centre.

So how did they -- how did it come up with that the lottery is the best or most efficient way of doing this? Noting that it was given a week's notice that they would open it up for applications, 60 were already allocated, in other words unavailable, and the remainder would be open for anybody who were able to put a package together. Was there no consideration to evaluation of impacts of these particular jobs or on positions not being filled? Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, as I've said multiple times in the House -- and I think it's really important to say again -- that there is absolutely no way for us to design a program that would have satisfied everybody in the territory who wanted to be a part of it. I am very sensitive to that. I am very empathetic to that. There's no way for us, with 150 allocations, to meet a demand that is far greater than that. And so there's no way for -- I knew there was going to be no way for us to launch a program that was going to be perfect in everyone's eyes.

I take full responsibility for the request of the lottery approach. It was something that we went back, under my direction, to the federal government and asked for. My concern was fairness in this process, and I didn't feel that launching a program on first come/first serve, where we could end up with technical issues, where we could end up with people in a panic the night before and the day of and the morning of trying to be the first one out of the gates. I thought it would be unfair because you end up with situations where people have themselves and their ten best friends waiting to put their application in, you end up with situations where the person with more data and the fastest internet being able to become part of that first come/first serve situation. And so having a more randomized approach meant that if somebody made the criteria and they met the deadline, that it did not hinge on them having the fastest internet or the most friends that could submit applications at the end of the day. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, I have Member for the Sahtu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I recall a number of years ago the two Indigenous organizations there, the GTC and the Tlicho, acquiring substantial amount of training funds through Skills Canada, and I thought that was quite complementary to the training plan that they outlined in the article there. And I'm just wondering if there's some departmental efforts in acquiring a partnership for accessing some of the Skills Canada funding available? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. I'll go to the Minister.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So, Madam Chair, when it comes to Skills Canada, we still do put money in for Skills NWT. I believe we put in $70,000. And that is matched through funding as well from the federal government. There's also Skills 4 Success that we had funding for through the federal government. That funding has since sunset. And then we also have labour market dollars that we get through the federal government. As I previously mentioned here this evening, $625 million of that funding was sunset across the country. That is, of course, met with not a lot of support from provincial and territorial Ministers. I was just on an FTP call that spoke to this again earlier today. That's the FLMM table. And I'm using an acronym against my better judgement, and I can't remember what it stands for. But it's the labour market Ministers' table. And we are constantly and consistently advocating for the reinstatement of that $625 million, especially right now with what is happening south of our border. Those dollars are incredibly important across the country. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. I'll go to the Member for the Sahtu.