Revamped Report Offers User-Friendly Look at Implementation of Socio-Economic Agreements

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June 6, 2019      

This year’s Socio-Economic Agreements report offers a new way to look at how the GNWT and mines are doing at meeting their commitments under these agreements.

The latest report was tabled in the Legislative Assembly by Minister Wally Schumann yesterday, marking the first use of this revamped format.

These reports lay out progress by companies and the GNWT towards targets identified in the socio-economic agreements for each mine in areas like revenues, local employment, and training. It also checks in on social and health indicators in communities named under these socio-economic agreements.

The report took a more graphic and narrative focused turn – offering real stories to communicate information and generating engaging visuals to communicate complex information.

Here are some highlights from this year’s report.

Revenues

  • In 2017/2018, diamond mines contributed about 44% of all taxes the GNWT collected. They were collected through corporate, property, fuel, and payroll taxes.
  • $8.9 million in resource royalties were redistributed to Indigenous governments

Employment

  • 1996-2017, 49% of all person-years of employment at the diamond mines have been held by northern employees.
  • About half of those person-years went to northern Indigenous employees. That’s about 13,700.

Training

  • Since its inception, the NWT Mine Training Society has worked with government and NWT mines to help 1,460 NWT residents find employment in the NWT mining industry.

  • That’s about 7% of the entire NWT working labour force.

Reaching out

In 2018, meetings were held jointly by the GNWT and the NWT’s diamond mines with the:

  • Northwest Territory Métis Nation
  • Łutselk’e Dene First Nation
  • Tłı̨chǫ Government
  • Deninu K’ue First Nation
  • Native Women’s Association of the Northwest Territories
  • Yellowknives Dene First Nation

Advancing Community Priorities

In 2018 a number of meetings and conferences were facilitated in the interest of greater engagement between communities, government and the mining industry:

  • Promoting Employment Workshop
  • Indigenous Women in Mining Conference
  • Senior Leadership Meetings
  • Indigenous Governments and Organizations Meetings
  • Recruitment Workshops