Inuvik Twin-Lakes MLA Lesa Semmler's had a busy year—but looking back on what she managed to get moving and what's still sitting in her stack of member's statements, she's still got a long way to go.
"Just to make sure we get the work done," she said. "It's been an awkward year and a few months. We're still trying to do the work, but we still have to deal with Covid-19 on the side."
Now having gotten through the learning curve of the legislature, Semmler said she's hoping to build on the work she has accomplished with her peers, including reforming hiring processes, establishing an NWT-based action plan on how to combat the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) crisis and getting more funding to social housing.
Adding that a draft action plan towards MMIWG has now been tabled, meaning it's available for viewing and discussion, Semmler said she hoped to have a plan in place by the end of her term.
"This is how we're going to come up with the action plan within the four years," she said. "This is just a timeline of how the action is going to be implemented. Once they've done, we'll have the NWT action plan without waiting for the federal government."
Another big win for Semmler was the movement on social housing, which she said was largely stagnant until the Covid-19 pandemic put the issue front-and-centre.
She noted now the social development committee has prioritized housing and she hoped to see results out of their work before the end of her term.
"That was one of the things I had heard when I was campaigning — people want housing, people need housing, people are homeless," she said. "I think with Covid-19, it actually kicked it in gear to show how vulnerable people are without housing.
"So now you've got the federal government coughing up way more money. We even have the department of housing staff coming into Inuvik."
Many items on her fix-it list are longstanding issues, some of which she said largely haven't been looked at.
She cited the government's hiring practices as one such issue that she felt was only now getting a serious overhaul.
"Over the years, they've had different action plans in order to increase Indigenous hiring in the GNWT and we haven't moved that needle in 40 years," she said. "So our Government Operations committee is looking at the affirmative action policy, and also within the government the systemic racism that's keeping this down.
"There are programs I bring up in the house all the time because I'm trying to keep Human Resources, staff and government managers accountable. I will bring them up every session because that way they're not going to forget we have people who are qualified that are sitting there waiting for jobs, but are being screened out because they don't have any experience.
"There's no faith in the system. There's no trust they're going to do the right thing. I've heard the stories where someone applies for a job, does the interview and then all of a sudden the competition gets cancelled. And then it's advertised again, they apply again, they get screened in, do the interview and then it gets cancelled.
"I've heard managers say 'Well, I don't want that person and that's the person that I'm going to get, so I'll just cancel the competition and run it again.' There's so many loopholes within the system, somebody needs to be watching that."
Overall, Semmler said she was working to keep lines of communication between her fellow regular members, pointing out that when they vote collectively they can have a significant effect on the legislative agenda.
As an example, she highlighted the changes to the capital budget forced by the regular members, which she said was only accomplished by joining forces.
"What I've learned is the regular members have a lot of power, especially if they stick together," she said. "For the most part, I think we've been pretty good at backing each other's ideas. This last sitting, we got a lot of money put into housing by sticking together and negotiating back-and-forth before it went to the floor."