Thank you. So if in this current intake for the 90 -- the 90 spots, if there's 200 applications or 500 applications or whatever it may be -- because there's going to be more than available spots. That's the predicament we find ourselves in. If there's a change in quota, are we going to do the same thing where people who apply to this intake are held over in case there's a new -- an expansion of quota in the future? Thank you.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, knowing what we know now, I am not making any commitments for 2026. What we did when we paused the reopening of the program in January of this year was we actually went and we sat down with stakeholders before we relaunched the program under new expectations and new parameters. So the work that we're going to do this year in 2025 is sit down with our stakeholders and determine what the program is going to look like in 2026. And so before we've had the opportunity to do that, I won't be making any commitments as to what 2026 will look like. We will need to make sure that we are prepared based on allocations right now and based on potential changes that a future or existing federal government could come forward with. Unfortunately, as far as allocation numbers are concerned, we really are at the mercy of the decisions of the federal government. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to the Member for Range Lake.

Thank you. And I acknowledge that, and it is a decision that was made unilaterally and has earned the ire of many provincial governments and territorial governments. But, you know, one of the problems we have is that we have -- we only have just hit our quota whereas the Yukon has been hitting -- has made good use of that quota over time, and before they -- they're cut down to 400, but they were operating at 800. So the Maritimes have a different system where they pool their allocation. I think it's around 5,000 applications that's split between all the provinces. Is there a -- so there's different models, I guess, is what I'm getting at and ways to advance this issue together. I fear that if we just stay in our kind of box and just play with the numbers we have, we're not really going to change anything even if there's a more willing partner in Ottawa. So is the Minister prepared to work with Yukon and Nunavut to -- or with internal resources, but just we need something new, we need a new take on this, and to continue putting that pressure on the federal government to give us those quotas back. But can we pool our strength with the other northern territories in particular and get a deal like they have in the Maritimes or the Atlantic provinces? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So, Madam Chair, the Yukon was able to move their nominee program up to 430 allocations in previous years. This year, because they were cut by 50 percent, they went down to 215. So that said, they are still starting from a place that was greater than our allocation but not as high as the Member indicated.

It's worth noting, Madam Chair, that different territories are in different positions as far as nominee programs are concerned. Right now, Nunavut does not have a nominee program. That being said, I hear the Member, and I'm certainly always willing to work pan-territorially. I have a wonderful working relationship with Minister Pillai on this -- or Premier Pillai on this file and have had the opportunity to speak with him, and he has certainly granted me time to speak with me on this which I very much appreciate the camaraderie between the three territories, and certainly, I'm happy to extend that conversation to this file here.

Thank you. I'll go to the Member for Range Lake.

Yeah, thank you for the clarification. I don't know why I had the 800 in my mind. But that's good to hear. I think the fact that Nunavut doesn't have one is the reason why we should be leading this conversation because, you know, if they don't need the quota right now -- clearly they don't -- then we could make use of theirs until they're at a time to be ready. So I really encourage the Minister to have more than a conversation, put a plan together, and really aggressively lobby, and lean on the provinces too because, you know, here's a secret. The provinces understand the territories are different than the provinces and are very willing to support us in our specific needs, and I think they will buy into this approach, especially if we broaden the conversation into Arctic sovereignty as well. So I strongly encourage the Minister to put a plan together, or at least a concept together, that can be shared with Premier Pillai, and I'm not sure who the Minister responsible is in Nunavut as well, but build a coalition and find a number that works for all three territories that we can share and bring that to the desk of the Minister of citizenship and refugees. Thank you -- to immigration and refugees. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Certainly, I will continue my advocacy, and I appreciate the amount that this topic has come up on the floor. I certainly talked about it frequently in the last term, and I'm happy to continue the honour of being able to work on it on this side. So thank you.

Thank you. Next, I have the Member for Frame Lake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just give me a sec here to find -- okay. Yeah, I just wanted to note that there doesn't appear to be any substantial growth in this area of the budget, the labour development and standards area generally. However, a number of goals in the business plan, and certainly the mandate of this government, speaks to increasing workforce, and I could go through the process of listing off a bunch but I'll ask questions about business planning in a sec.

Can I just ask the high level question first, you know, how is this division supporting the priorities of this mandate particularly in supporting labour market training and development efforts and, indeed, growing the workforce of the Northwest Territories? If we're not kind of giving further resources to this department, how are we expecting them to achieve kind of better results or the increased goals that are listed throughout the business plan? Thank you.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I'll start, and then would -- I'm sure the Members would love to also get to hear somebody else talk at this table as well, and I'll pass to deputy minister Fulford who I know has wonderful things to say.

So to start, some of the things that we are doing have to do -- you know, for example, in this section, we have apprenticeship allocation certification. We also have our labour market programs. And unfortunately, while we did see that the federal government did not reinstate our labour market programs across the country, we saw a $625 million dip in that funding across the country. We were still able to hang on largely to what we were able to do in this section even without that because, as the Member said, this is an incredibly important section. So as one of the key things that we've done that I love to be able to talk about is really broaden the access points for access to entry into the trades. So it used to be that you had to graduate from high school, for example, with certain courses and have certain marks in them, and one of the things that we've done is open up another route which says if you have graduated from high school in the Northwest Territories, you can enter into an apprenticeship.

Some of the other pieces that we've done are really going out and trying to bring together, you know, the programs that we have within education, culture and employment and the residents that are trying to access them, so certainly working with our dev corps who are putting together their own training and workforce development tools as well, and then we also have our Skills 4 Success. And with that, Madam Chair, I would love to pass to the deputy minister who can speak in greater detail.

Thank you. Deputy minister.

Thank you. I'll go to the Member for Frame Lake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for those answers. So maybe I'll turn to some of the targets in the business plan. And just want to say, you know, I do appreciate that they've established targets. This is something that I raised during the last review. I guess my comment now is, you know, the targets are still -- I guess vague isn't the right word. But I'll give an example.

So our target for implementation of the post -- for post-secondary is to increase post-secondary students from 569. So having a target like that means that we will achieve our goal if we have 570 students in post-secondary. So we've increased it by one; therefore, it's been increased. So I guess the comment I would make is it's great to establish a target of increasing students, increasing post-secondary students. We've got increased students in occupational demand training. In every case, the targets in this area of the business plan, which is growing and enhancing the northern workforce, the target is to grow it but we don't know how much or how it's going to happen.

There's so many of these, I don't think I can possibly get into all of them with the five minutes I have left. So I guess the question would be does the department plan to establish more specific targets for each of these line items and come forward with plans for actioning all of them? And if not in the business plan, where can MLAs look to find kind of what the department is hoping to achieve by 2027? Thank you.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I certainly want us as a territory to be very ambitious and to -- I'd love to see us set targets we know we can't meet and, you know -- that sounds silly, but in the sense that I always want us to be wanting more and wanting to grow bigger and wanting to achieve greater things as a territory together. That said, I know that there is -- we also want to be able to ensure that our goals and our targets are within reach. And so as a Minister, I don't want us to see 570 here and then pat ourselves on the back. As a Minister, I want us to see marketable change in these outcomes. I want -- you know, I want, for example, the MLA for Mackenzie Delta to feel at the end of this Assembly, like, together we have achieved something. I want, you know, the Member for the Sahtu who comes and talks to me quite frequently about trades training to feel that we've made significant differences in his region. And I think that that is important.

At this point in time, I will say to the Member I don't have a goal to sit and identify and strategize because what I would rather see staff doing is actually going out and making a difference in the lives of students. I want those career and education advisers not talking about in a strategy about what they do an a daily basis but doing those things. So it's -- I hear the Member. I hear the desire for documents like that. We do have our Skills 4 Success document that we continue to work towards and strategies like that, but I don't want to create new ones. I want staff out there working with residents and with Northerners. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to the Member for Frame Lake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And, I mean, I guess what I would say in response to that is that the difficulty is -- I'm not necessarily looking for documents per se. I don't think that staff time is necessarily best spent kind of just producing plans and reports all the time, but the problem is is that if we don't know what we're trying to achieve, it's very hard to define for the people trying to achieve it what success is going to look like and what they should be working towards. So I guess I've got to come up with some Member's statements to talk about this a bit more because -- but the bottom line is is that, you know, if we're just looking to increase post-secondary students but we don't really know what that's going to look like, how -- it's very difficult for me to understand how we have kind of a concerted plan. Or have we even gone about the work of trying to identify, you know, what are the problems that we're trying to solve, what is the -- what are the main barriers to workforce development in the territory and what do we need to do in order to kind of remove those barriers and increase the workforce and what does success look like. I do think that it's important to define that.

So maybe the Minister can or her staff can kind of help me better understand it because I think that there probably are answers to these questions out there. They don't necessarily have to take the form of a plan, but I do want to know that we know exactly -- that we have a good idea of what we're trying to achieve with any given program. And better yet, that we're even measuring the success of that program so we can determine if we're achieving it. Thank you.

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