EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
When they can’t see the reduction on the foodstuffs, how can they know that the product they are buying has had its price reduced? Will a list outlining the price reductions be made available to them that are not listed at this time?
It is a very complicated question and we do encourage the entities that are out there to assist people with disabilities. That’s exactly what some of these companies, industry, and retailers try to do to accommodate people with disabilities by building ramps or even assisting them.
Of course, if they don’t have any family members, they do try to assist the best way possible.
I can’t be certain of exactly how’s that done at this time, but when people are blind and grocery shopping, I’m sure there’s somebody there to assist with their shopping.
I don’t think the Premier really understood my question, so I will ask again by citing an example.
A product that is for sale, with the price reduced, how will I know that the price is subsidized? The price tags don’t list the reduction of the price, so how will I be able to see the subsidy put towards that product? That is my question.
Some Inuit are unilingual or have very basic math skills. When will they be able to understand the subsidies applied to the products they intend to purchase? Not all Inuit have disposable incomes from a salaried position here in Nunavut.
It’s a very difficult question to answer.
That’s why people that don’t fully understand what items are on sale, I’m sure they have family members that they take along to assist them in their purchases.
Let me ask you firstly.
We have seen in the past when the questions become too similar to previous queries, the Chair has the authority to stop the questioning, especially when members understand the issue and they continue to probe further.
This issue holds a personal concern related to the Statistics Canada census survey where the surveyor arrived into our community. Mr. Chairman, if you can provide me an opportunity to voice my concern about this census, I first ask for your discretion to allow my question.
I will provide that opportunity based on the reasoning that many concerns from various communities have been expressed about the survey.
If we provide this information to our Premier, it will be beneficial for his submission of concerns, so I will allow you to voice your concern.
Please go ahead, Mr. Shooyook.
Mr. Shooyook (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Mr. Premier, my ningaukuluk, and your officials. Welcome.
This matter highlights one concern I have regarding the current census surveyor and the process, as he came to our home when I happened to be completely alone.
We had a brief discussion when I asked him who he was and what he was doing. His response was that he was conducting the census.
He asked me if I spoke English and I replied, “Just a little,” and I informed him that I knew a very capable interpreter that I would call.
He responded that he would return at 4:00 p.m. I started expecting to see this person who provides most of the local interpreting services and whether the surveyor would come in with this person.
He arrived with an interpreter who wasn’t as capable when they arrived to conduct the census.
Now, with the extreme importance placed on this census and future funding levels related to the data, including identifying the elders who qualify for senior citizen benefits, in my community where I was elected, many residents decided not to participate in this survey.
The reasoning was that they didn’t share the same language and since they were alone without an interpreter present, even though this census is one of our most critically important surveys as this is a very significant process.
I now direct our Premier to send recommendations for all future census surveyors to be multilingual so that they don’t require an interpreter. I wonder if this can be accommodated.
Does this government have the ability to recommend that change or will it remain being conducted in this manner where the surveyor comes in unexpectedly to conduct the survey without an interpreter?
This can be disconcerting to some residents. I would like to know if a decision will be made.
Will this process continue in this way? Let me get an answer to that.
Although I know (interpretation ends) Mr. Premier (interpretation) had responded to some earlier questions related to that matter, due to the importance of this survey, I allowed the member to ask the question. Although you may have answered some parts of the question, I will allow you another opportunity to respond, (interpretation ends) Premier Taptuna.
Hon. Peter Taptuna (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to thank the member asking about this matter.
Earlier, I had responded that in Nunavut, our elected federal representative is the MP as well as a federal minister, Minister Tootoo.
I will ensure I bring up that concern, as perhaps qualified Inuit surveyors are in short supply here in Nunavut that many residents did not complete the survey, especially unilingual Inuit residents, either in Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun, and their personal data was not collected.
They have replied that they have searched for workers who are bilingual and requested qualified surveyors, but they haven’t seen any applications.
I will ensure that I forward that at my next meeting with Minister Tootoo about that concern and ask him what he thinks would be the best way.
Mr. Shooyook, are you done?
We’re on Branch Summary. Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs. Strategic Planning.
Total Operations and Maintenance, to be Voted. $3,605,000.
Turn to page B-6. It reads, Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs. Branch Summary.
Nunavut Cabinet. Total Operations and Maintenance, to be Voted. $4,643,000.
Please be aware that I’m reading the Inuktitut version. If they’re wrong, it’s not my fault.
Turn to page B-7. It reads, Branch Summary. Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs.
Commissioner of Nunavut. Total Operations and Maintenance, to be Voted. $297,000. Do you agree?
I might not have too many questions here.
I’m sorry, I’m wrong.
Chairman (interpretation): For clarity, I’ll go over it again.
Branch Summary. Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs. Commissioner of Nunavut.
Total Operations and Maintenance, to be Voted. $297,000.
Mr. Alexander Sammurtok (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (interpretation ends) In your business plan on page 12, your department’s draft for 2016-19 indicates that it “has been working with the Deputy Ministers’ Committee on Quality of Life to coordinate Government of Nunavut services to Seniors provided by all departments. The department is also working with the Department of Health to coordinate GN’s participation in the Ministers’ responsible for Seniors Secretariat.
The department is working to conclude an internal MOU to streamline services for Seniors.”
Is the government looking at the issue at harmonizing the age in which residents are considered to be seniors for the purpose of eligibility for certain government programs and services?
Yes, we are working on that. As members are well aware, there are many different ages that are considered seniors or elders and there are many different programs that have different age categories. We are working to ensure that it’s harmonized.
Your department’s draft 2016-19 business plan indicates that it is “working to conclude an internal MOU to streamline services for Seniors.”
Can you describe in detail what is planned to be included in the internal MOU?
If I can, I’ll have Deputy Minister Akeeagok respond to that.
Regarding the internal MOUs in the regions and who will be working together and what their tasks will be, which the Premier mentioned and have given direction on, we are tasked with completing a number of this during the year.
The work being done and the services provided to elders are under different rules. Under the internal MOU, we are looking at how we can streamline them.
We need to have a common understanding as regions and as departments in order to work together better. From there, we want to provide elders with programs and services that are available to them. That is what we are currently doing at this time.
Mr. Sammurtok (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (interpretation ends) Last November, you appointed yourself as Nunavut’s Minister responsible for Seniors’ Advocate.
How do your responsibilities differ from those of the Minister of Culture and Heritage, whose department has responsibility for certain elders programs?
Mr. Chairman, as the advocate for seniors, I have started some initiatives to ensure that all our seniors throughout Nunavut understand that there are programs available within the government in various, different departments.
We are putting together a resource manual or resource book to be distributed to the communities through our GLOs.
That’s one of the initiatives we are doing right now because there are so many departments that have programs for seniors.
We want to ensure that seniors throughout Nunavut understand that there are programs out there that might be able to help them. There are programs in the Nunavut Housing Corporation, in the health department, Justice, and other departments, including Family Services.
Mr. Chairman, we want to ensure that we find a way to have our seniors apply without getting confused. In some cases, it involves two or three different departments. We want to ensure that we advocate to ensure that they have assistance in getting through the programs they are applying for.
On November 22, 2015, the Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated announced the establishment of the Nunavut Inuit Training Corporation. You and the Minister of Education sit on the corporation board of directors.
As of today, how many meetings has the board of directors held and what was decided on at these meetings?
The board has conducted one board of directors meeting. A second one is scheduled for some time this month.
The initial meeting that we had was to set up the priorities, including the by-laws of the corporation, and the second meeting will fine-tune that.
Once again, it is finalized by Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated.
The Minister of Education and I will be certainly participating in the meeting.
The May 2015 settlement agreement that you co-signed with the federal minister of northern affairs and the president of NTI provided in part that the Government of Canada and the Government of Nunavut will each establish a central Inuit employment and training coordination office.
If I can, I would like one of my officials to appear at the witness table.
Does the committee agree to have another witness go to the witness table?
Iqsuqtii, can you escort the witness in?
Premier Taptuna, can you introduce your staff?
This is Virginia Lloyd.
Alex had a question. Premier Taptuna.
I’ll defer that question to Ms. Lloyd.
Chairman: Ms. Lloyd.
With the provision within the settlement agreement articulating the centre for Inuit employment within the respective governments, for the Government of Nunavut, this office is held within our department at Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs through the Strategic Planning Branch, which oversees Inuit employment.
First of all, before I ask my questions, I would like to acknowledge the Premier. When he did visit the community of Baker Lake, he met with the elders’ society in Baker Lake, which actually gave the elders’ committee a chance to voice their concerns and the issues that they face.
In line with that regarding the senior citizens and what my colleague had asked, I would like to take that to another step.
When we look at the harmonizing of the age, presently I understand, according to the information in the Hansard that was provided by you and your office, that there are three key departments here: the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, and the federal government.
When I look at that, I know there are a lot of legal aspects in regard to harmonizing the age.
If we are to look at harmonizing the age for our senior citizens, is there an anticipated timeline?
I am anticipating that we have something that’s workable before our general election.
Mr. Chairman, we will work with the other departments. That’s why we talk about the MOU.
We want to ensure that it’s harmonized within the Government of Nunavut. It’s going to be very difficult to change anything with the federal government, but within Nunavut, we certainly want to do that. We will certainly be consulting with Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated to see how best that can be done.
I guess when we look at advocating senior citizens, considering Baker Lake has one of the larger populations of senior citizens, when I look at and consider that, some of them do get benefits from Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated.
When we look at the federal government, the Old Age Pension and stuff like that, when we look at these benefits, will there be legal consultations occurring between the three government entities?
It’s something that has yet to be determined, but we are working on that.
Mr. Chairman, our initial target is to ensure within the Government of Nunavut that we give it our best effort to harmonize the seniors’ age for our programming within our territory.
I wholeheartedly acknowledge the work that is going to be required to deal with the harmonization of the age.
There is an MOU in place and before harmonizing the age, will there be further community consultations with elders to actively hear their concerns and their point of view on this matter?
We will certainly be talking to the MLAs representing their communities. Hopefully, we will come to a conclusion where there’s agreement in ensuring that seniors are capable and able to access our programming.
I will move on to another thing here.
In your department’s draft 2016-19 business plan, it indicates that one of its priorities for the 2016-17 fiscal year is to “Conduct a 360’ evaluation of the Government Liaison Officer program with the intent of improving service level expectations.”
Can you describe what is meant by “a 360’ evaluation” and can you indicate who will be conducting this evaluation?
I’ll have Deputy Minister Akeeagok respond to that question.
Chairman (interpretation): I didn’t hear that.
Mr. Akeeagok (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (interpretation ends) A 360 assessment is when we’re reviewing that general program, we will ask all the users, the staff, the people that run it, and you have a whole, all-around look and we get input from everybody, from the users to the staff to the management. That’s what a 360 assessment does. It isn’t just reviewed by one stream; it gets input from everybody. (interpretation) Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
When you’re indicating all the parties that are involved, is that internal within the government or are you also considering external sources, such as municipal councils and citizens of a community?
Yes, we will be including the municipalities, as all the GLOs are within all our small communities throughout Nunavut.
When I look at this evaluation of the government liaison officers within our territory, is that evaluation separate from the government’s overall operational audit initiative?
Yes, it is separate.
As MLAs, we communicate with each other. In some communities, there are no government liaison officers and in some communities, they also have municipal liaison officers.
Is that different from the government liaison officer positions in communities?
I thank the committee member for that. I believe Kugluktuk is the only one without a GLO officer, but I’ll update that as soon as I can. Mr. Chairman, I would like to have Deputy Minister Akeeagok respond to the committee member’s question.
Regarding some of the things you have mentioned, some communities still have municipal liaison officers, but when we were creating government liaison officers, we had to come up with an agreement.
The communities that kept their municipal liaison officers deal only with municipal matters, but the government liaison officers deal with government services.
That is the agreement. Some communities went ahead and some communities dissolved the other liaison officer and had only one liaison officer. We have agreements in place with those communities.
When you look at communities that have GLOs and some communities have MLOs, and in listening to the response, if I’m hearing correctly, some communities currently have two of these positions, one is a GLO and one is an MLO, as stated by an agreement.
Are their career objectives identical? Maybe it could be elaborated what the difference would be.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you. Premier Taptuna.
The (interpretation ends) government liaison officers (interpretation) deal with Nunavut government issues and if they’re asked to deal with other governments like the federal government or a municipal government, they deal with issues that need to be dealt with.
The communities with municipal liaison officers deal only with municipal matters and they don’t deal with government matters anymore.
Most of the agreements are different from each other and their duties are set as such, but municipal liaison officers deal only with the municipal office.
I think we are still under (interpretation ends) Intergovernmental Affairs, (interpretation) if I am right. Yes? I haven’t approved this yet.
I wanted to ask questions on this earlier related to Minister Quassa’s statement that I ought to have submitted questions regarding Arctic College. The Premier also alluded to it, specifically the Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated court case, which resulted in compensation, and the funds were transferred through an agreement and created the Makigiaqta Inuit Training Corporation.
Since the Premier sits on this board, what does he envision happening in, let’s say, the next five-year period of the kind of operations this organization would undertake to train Inuit?
I thank the committee member for the excellent question.
Mr. Chairman, we were approached by Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, through discussions, to appoint us onto the board.
As a government, we do have a lot of initiatives and a lot of programs in training, especially through Article 23.
It seemed like a good fit that we can share best practices, absolutely, on some of these programs that we do run.
As members are well aware, the training initiative, Sivumuaqatigiit, is in EIA, Intergovernmental Affairs, and of course, we want to increase Inuit capacity in the government and throughout the whole territory, whether it be industry, Inuit organizations, and even into the federal government. We see this as an opportunity.
Mr. Chairman, with this multi-year funding, we can actually make plans for multi-year initiatives. It was very difficult in the past with one-year funding available.
Through this, we intend to have more Inuit in employment within the government, within industry, and within the Inuit organizations.
Looking down the line here in five years, I see more Inuit working at all levels, not just with our territorial government, but everywhere throughout Nunavut.
I think it’s called Makigiaqta. I’ll refer to it as the Makigiaqta board.
Have you come up with a strategy on which positions will be trained in the public service?
There is Sivumuaqatigiit and Nunavut Arctic College has different programs on career development.
Will there be additional training where employees are lacking? What is the goal of Makigiaqta?
Again I thank the committee member for that excellent question.
Mr. Chairman, our goals are we want Inuit in semi-professional and professional positions throughout Nunavut.
As we have indicated, our mandate is to ensure that we get the best training possible for beneficiaries. Again, we want to ensure that we have more professionals within Nunavut.
One of the things that we talked about is that Nunavut does have high-quality water within the territory and more water than some countries, but we do not have a water chemist in Nunavut.
We want more biologists, geologists, and engineers. We want professionals within our communities.
With this opportunity, we can plan long term. That’s our goal. That’s our initiative.
It’s our goal to ensure that we come up with the best possible solutions when it comes to training and ensure that our trainees, the Inuit that participate in our training programs, succeed. We want to ensure that at all different levels.
Whether they’re employed now, there are opportunities for training in better professions, higher professional positions.
Looking down the line five years from now, we do have a lot of graduates that we will need jobs for.
Certainly, with an educated, well-trained workforce, Nunavut will have a better quality of life throughout.
With regard to Makigiaqta, the Premier talked about how it was initiated after NTI had taken the federal government to court, with more money now going to the Nunavut government with the third party agreement, as the Premier stated.
Can the minister tell us how much more money we would get through that agreement?
I’ll have Ms. Lloyd respond to that question.
In the settlement agreement that was signed last year by Nunavut Tunngavik, the Government of Canada, and the Government of Nunavut for the implementation of Article 23, there was $50 million set aside for the contract period, which will end in 2023. Of that $50 million, approximately $40 million is available to the Government of Nunavut to help increase Inuit employment within the Government of Nunavut.
Mr. Joanasie (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (interpretation ends) She used the word “available.” Is that on an application basis, or how will that work?
I will have Ms. Lloyd respond to that.
Yes, the $40 million that I referenced is for the time period which will end in 2023.
The way in which the Government of Nunavut will access the funds will be through a mechanism overseen by the Nunavut Implementation Panel, where submissions will be made by the Government of Nunavut in identifying priorities as to how to spend the set-aside dollars to implement Article 23, whether it be specific training and development programs, educational leave opportunities, or other measures that the Government of Nunavut would put forward to the implementation panel.
I also thank her for the response.
Who would be on the (interpretation ends) implementation panel?
It would be all three levels: the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, and the federal government.
Has it been decided who the actual people will be sitting on the panel?
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Joanasie. (interpretation ends) Premier Taptuna.
The Nunavut Implementation Panel is a body that has existed since 1993 to oversee the overall implementation of the land claims agreement.
Representatives from the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, and the Government of Canada are identified throughout the years.
Currently, the Government of Nunavut’s representative is the Assistant Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.
Nunavut Tunngavik also has representation from their implementation division, as well as the Government of Canada.
In regard to the training positions for Inuit, we spoke about the (interpretation ends) occupational demand model, (interpretation) which is intended for jobs that need to be filled. Would they use that to set up these positions?
If I can, Mr. Chairman, I will have Ms. Lloyd respond to that.
Models such as the occupational demand model will definitely assist in determining factors such as gaps that may be targeted for educational programs for beneficiaries, both within the public service as well as outside of the public service.
The occupational demand model is one component or one tool that we will be utilizing in addition to others to assist in determining how to best utilize the funds that have been set aside to implement Article 23.
Let me move on to something else.