Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In view of the rocky road that junior kindergarten has taken since its first implementation days, however, it wasn't rocky in some of the communities. There were some concerns out of that report that we tabled earlier this year.

One of the recommendations was to continue our engagements with the communities to see what the needs were. So these are with the existing junior kindergarten programs that are currently operating in the Northwest Territories at the moment. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. In meeting with the CSFTNO on the expansion of the school currently, we did see the enrolment rates going up and the utilization rates increasing. These are educational requirements. We know that they're expanding and the enrolments are coming up. We're meeting our educational requirements. There's not a cultural requirement to that. That's what they're asking for. The two extra classrooms are educational requirements because we want to make sure that, when the school enrolment and the utilization rate increases, that they do have the extra two classrooms that meet...

Yes, we were aware that they did put a proposal in at the same time that this Institution Strategic Investment Fund came out, and we were aware that they did put a proposal in as well.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With all the communities we do have some communities that have early childhood programs, some that don't. We also have funding allocated to some of these communities. For instance, in Deline pre-school we have 15 pre-school spaces. We fund just over $37,000 for that. We have funding for the Behdzi Ahda First Nation still there's no licensed program but we do have the funding there. There's funding that's allocated to Norman Wells to do some work; nothing has come to date yet; we're still trying to find an organization or group to work with. In Tulita we do have 20 pre...

Actually, that funding from the Heritage Canada is only for French schools, so there's, I believe, Ecole Boreal as well as EASC. So no other schools are able to get that money.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and, as I mentioned earlier today, that we are meeting our court ordered obligations. Anything that goes above the court order has to come through a third party funding, and so, and as I mentioned, if CSFTNO wants to go bigger and better that they've got to come up with a schematic design.

As I mentioned to the Minister or the Member earlier, that our staff would be willing to work with their staff and provide some support so that they can work on developing that design, and then we can go back. But our proposal was government to government, based on the court order that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Our staff did meet with APADY on October 7th and we did share with them our schematic design. As I mentioned and as my deputy minister, Ms. Haener has also mentioned, there's been a lot of meetings that have been happening as well. So we did give that design, in terms of what we're going to be doing with our court order, to APADY. Any feedback that they did have, we're still awaiting that feedback as well. So thank you, Mr. Chair.

CSO is a very integral part of our department when it comes to income assistance and programs. They do a great job in providing information to our clients, as well as our Career Development Officers, and we're just finishing up a one-year pilot program with Employment Transition Officers that actually go into the communities. Some of our Current Development Officers also go into the communities to provide education, training, information on resume writings, skill development and other areas in terms of literacy and numeracy to help people find jobs who apply for training workshops and finding...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Over the past years there has been funding given to the community to upgrade the facility. Some was roof replacements, foundation remediation. We did tour that school as well. The foundation is good. Utilization rate of Moose Kerr School I think is 41 per cent.

As I mentioned, when the utilization rate gets to 85 per cent then that's when we look at replacing the school or retrofitting or adding onto it. As I mentioned, it has been identified for renovations or replacement in approximately 2019, but we'll continue to work with all our schools moving forward just to see...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The CSFTNO were working collaboratively with the departments when that proposal was submitted and in terms of the schematic designs that did meet our capital standards were put into the designs that were presented to APADY as well as to CSFTNO. Thank you, Mr. Chair.