Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This week is Education Week and the theme is Changing the Way We Learn. I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize educators throughout the Northwest Territories for their hard work, dedication, support and commitment to our youth, but also to those who are seeking further education in post-secondary or upgrading programs.

With the constant goal to make sure our students are successful beyond the classroom, I want to make sure that our educators are, as well, and offer any type of support that I can. But I want to make a special thank you to those educators who take...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that this committee recommends that the government increase its allocation to fully fund the e-learning initiative currently provided and funded by the Beaufort-Delta District Education Council. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know the first round that I got through I focused a lot on early childhood development. I know when we give out our funding to our education authorities, being the Member that represents Inuvik Boot Lake and the Beaufort-Delta Education Authority and discussions and talking with both educators and staff, the amount of funding that they do get in that region alone, I’m not sure how the formula is given to the students, but in that area alone when we fund the Beaufort-Delta Education Authority it does have a very high cost associated to travel. So when we want educators...

Mr. Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the government reallocate an additional $2 million from its existing budget to early childhood development in order to achieve the priorities set by the 17th Legislative Assembly. Thank you.

I think, developing some occupational competencies, when we develop this, is going to be very handy not only for this government but it will set the future for our educators. Yesterday I was really hoping I would be able to get through all my questions and answers in the 10 minutes.

I’m a strong supporter of where the department is going. However, I’ve come to realize that this page alone, education and culture, is 79 percent of the overall ECE budget, so there will definitely be a lot of questions. If you look further, it’s 15 percent of the overall budget that we’re going to be approving...

I know the collaboration between the departments of Health and Education Culture and Employment, and in the opening remarks it mentions that there is $511,000 for wage top-up and training to increase the program staff for licenced child care centres.

That got me thinking. I did have some discussions with an early childhood development specialist whose husband works up in Inuvik. We got to talking about these new initiatives and early childhood, and she mentioned that we need to have a specialist that can certify all these early childhood workers and currently we don’t have that. I want to ask...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize two Pages from Inuvik here today, Caitlyn Church and Ms. Olivia Inglangasuk, both of whose favourites sports are northern games. I asked them what did they like best about being here in the Legislative Assembly this week. They said it was fun and would definitely do it again. They also said you get to meet lots of people and all the important people, so I’m assuming that might be the Members. They also said that they get to go on TV a lot and you get free food. But most of all, they said they have a better understanding of how the government works...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before I get into this motion specifically, the department and all Members of this Assembly have noticed that the Regular Members have introduced three motions particularly to this department. It’s not that we’re questioning their authority over what they’re doing, we just want to support the great things that are happening in education right now, early childhood development, child daycares and, in this case, the e-learning program.

We see what’s happening in the communities. We see how things are changing within the communities and throughout the Northwest Territories...

The Minister alluded to my second question. That was how do we reach these individuals who are in their homes. Do we have a community outreach worker or a mobile client service officer for the communities? I know in some of the smaller communities, we have these government service officers that might be able to help, but in some of our regional centres where the GSOs aren’t readily available -- we have a higher population – our home care can address these as well. They usually help in that case.

Can the Minister confirm that in the regional centres that we do have mobile client service officers...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In a perfect world there would be no bullying. Unfortunately, we see it all too often in our schools, in our communities and even in the workplace. However, there is some good news. The good news is that we have a lot of anti-bullying advocates here in the North. For example, today we just had a group of youth in the Great Hall to draw attention to this serious issue with the support of their educators, but it’s not only the youth who are our strongest advocates, we have groups and organizations across this great territory. We have strong advocates in the schools, the...