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

I will go to the Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I wanted to first zero in on, okay, the labour market programs, and looking at the goal that has been set out in the business plan to increase -- let me just bring up the business plan -- to maintain or increase the uptake. And so I notice that so far between 2022-2023 and then the following year 2023-2024, in fact there was a decrease in the number of clients and the number of employers that were participating in the labour market programs. Fairly significant, so from 188 to 156 clients in 2023-2024, and then from 71 to 63 employers. I also note that there was a significant drop in funding between those two years, and we're maintaining that lower level of funding. Like, what is the department's plan to actually try to raise those numbers if we're actually seeing a drop so far? Thank you, Madam Chair.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, if I can say to Members, if they want me to follow along in the business plan, it would be helpful if they gave me a page number.

So in regards to the changes in the labour development and standards section, we've gone from 2024-2025 Main Estimates of $17 million, and now we're sitting at 2025-2026 Main Estimates of $18.9 million. And so if the Member is wanting me to reference a different section, very, very happy to speak to specific sections and what the changes might be.

As far as changes in number of employers itself, I guess in that case would venture to pass to assistant deputy -- no? I am going to say that at the end of the day, I don't have the data that would show, you know, on hand right now, who those employers are and kind of what that would look like. There's certainly going to be fluctuations year over year, and our staff are going to continue to work with residents in order to increase, first of all, through my ITI hat, the number of self-employed persons that we have across the territory. And then with my ECE hat back on, certainly working to make sure that we are supporting employers to grow, that we are supporting them to access wage subsidies so that they can take on more staff, do more training. And the addition of that is I will say in conversations about this in other circles that there are also businesses currently being purchased by larger conglomerates. And so, you know, where we've got joint ventures or we've got, you know, the purchase of different businesses. This has even happened in Kam Lake by Indigenous governments or by dev corps themselves. And so the differences in our number of businesses, while there are businesses that have a certainly closed in the territory, some of them are businesses purchasing other businesses, but I don't have that level of detail in front of me here to say what exactly I'm pointing at here. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. And so the page in the business plan I was looking at is page 18, in case that helps. But I'll -- I mean, on a related topic, you know, in the budget there's -- we've got the trades and occupations wage subsidy that's the same as last year, so $922,000. Is this fully subscribed? So those are grants to provide financial assistance to employers to hire Northerners and support that individual if they get apprenticeship or occupation certification. Can the Minister tell us whether that's fully subscribed and are there -- is there more demand for this program than we can offer with the $922,000 that's allocated to it? Thank you, Madam Chair.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I can say in previous years, these programs all have not been fully subscribed. One of the goals that I certainly have is I want to see them fully subscribed. I want to see them in communities doing the good work of supporting employers to hire people to do the training, to purchase equipment they need to purchase in order to support somebody's learning and experience on the job. And so certainly a goal of mine is to see these programs absolutely fully subscribed across the territory. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. And so just to confirm, so the next one down the list, the workforce development agreement which also provides grants for both individuals and employers to help with training supports, employment partnerships, can the Minister confirm whether that one is fully subscribed or that's also still an aspiration or goal to actually spend all that money? Thank you, Madam Chair.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, when I'm talking about the programs, I'm talking about all of our labour market programs as a whole have not been all fully subscribed. To compare the numbers of where each of them have been at, I would need to get back to the Member as far as their subscription rates. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. I mean, I know that there's also been a lot of work to try to ramp up the SNAP program and that might help feed into some of these programs, right, so if we're getting more students, you know, leading them towards apprenticeships then we'll see more uptake as they get a bit older. And so it does seem like there has been some increases -- okay, and so now I'm looking at page 14 in the business plan.

There has at least been an increase from 5 to 6. Okay, if I go up -- in any case, has the Minister tried to identify, like, what are the barriers to expanding that SNAP program even more, to have it be taken up by even more students across the territory? I know it's been stuck at sort of it's -- it's been active in four regions of the territory. I know one of the goals is to expand it to more of the communities and more of the regions in the territory, and that hasn't seemed to happen so far. Does the Minister have any insights into what's stopping it from expanding to more regions or attracting more people? Thank you, Madam Chair.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So absolutely, Madam Chair, I don't think it would be a shock to anybody in this room that I am obsessed with the SNAP program. And the Member is 100 percent right, I want to see this program in not just every region. I would love us to be overambitious and see it in every single community because I think at the end of the day, we would -- it would serve the entire territory in such a positive way.

So this program, really, over the course of the last four years has exploded in numbers, and that is in gratitude to the staff at ECE that have really hit the pavement and really hit the road in making those relationships. And so what is the biggest thing that we need in the territory in order to make this program work, especially in every single community across the territory? We need those relationships. We need employers who have journey persons on staff, who are willing to take on a SNAP student. That is the number one thing that we need here. If we can find those relationships, we can certainly turn around and find the students. But first and foremost, we need those employers willing to take on students. I'll stop there. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. It does make sense, and I look forward to sort of further conversations with the Minister and colleagues to -- for us to brainstorm and find pathways forward to, you know, find more journey persons to take on apprentices, find more employers. And I should clarify too that when I was talking about moving from 5 to 6, so there's more SNAP student participants in that but it's that there were 5 SNAP students registered as apprentices, and then it's gone to now 6 registered apprentices.

My last question, so also another big highlight in the business plan which I know the Minister is a big fan of is the laddering programs, and it talks about the number of laddering programs we're trying to increase and the number of students. But can the Minister explain what exactly is a laddering plan and how we count them or how we know, you know, if we're going from 35 to something, what is a laddering plan and how do you count them? Thank you, Madam Chair.

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

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. So a laddering program is a program that you take, you know, this course here, and that course there affords you also the experience that you need and the credentialing that you need to get to the second part of the course. And so a great example of that -- not one that we have currently in the Northwest Territories, but that I would love to one day see -- is, for example, if you sign up for a nursing program through Ryerson College today and you for some reason have to withdraw after the first year, they ensure that you finish with your personal support worker program. If you go back and you have remained for two years, they ensure that you finish with, for example, your licensed nursing program. If you stay for all four years, you finish with your registered nursing program.

So that's an example of a laddering program is where based on how many years you stay, you still finish every year with a different credential. And what that accounts for is we know that life comes up, we know that everyone's living circumstances are different and people might have -- they might have an intention to be on a program for four years, but that's not always what people are able to do. So laddering programs allow us to build on our experience within our education and training system. So that are the types of programs that we have in the territory. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, Members, we will have a short break. Thank you.

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Thank you, Madam Chair. Sorry, earlier I was unavailable; my computer died, so. I did want to -- I appreciate the opportunity to return to this.

I did want to follow up on what has been done or said about the nominee program with respect to the numbers. Maybe the Minister can enlight on that or the department as to what action they've actually specifically taken to demonstrate they need the current numbers. Thank you.

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