Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned last week, the new influx of dollars into the Small Community Employment Support Program came into effect April 1st. We are about six months into this fiscal year, and we are still looking at how we can support our communities, support our partners so that we can utilize this program. I think it is a little too early on in this fiscal year to have any of that information, but I will make sure that our departments continue to work with our partners, our communities, to make sure that these dollars are being utilized to their full capacity.

As I mentioned earlier, as a government and as a department, we do support our students, whether they decided to get their education here in the Northwest Territories or outside the Northwest Territories. We want to make sure that all our students who are taking post-secondary education have that opportunity to succeed, and we are going to continue and commit to making sure that our students have that opportunity.

As we were discussing with our contractors, we are going to be working very closely with them. They will be working very closely with the college to ensure that, when the review is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, there have been some delays in the correspondence back and forth, but we take all of committee's recommendations and suggestions seriously, and we do want to work with all Members in this Legislative Assembly. It is not us versus them. We should all be working together in the best interests of our residents, in the best interests of our students, and of the people that put us in this House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I've stated earlier, we continue to support the students in the TEP program as well as the social work program. We will continue to commit to making sure that they have every opportunity to succeed here in the Northwest Territories at Aurora College, but also students who are getting an education down south. That we're going to commit to making sure that our students have every opportunity to succeed in whatever programs they're registered in, Mr. Speaker.

I can't speculate at this time what the review is going to say and what those recommendations are going to be, but when we do get those...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think we've gone through this discussion over time, at our last session as well, that decisions were made and we're moving forward in the best interests of students, in the best interests of education in the Northwest Territories and post-secondary. We continue to support our students here in the North at Aurora College programming, the two programs in particular that were discussed. We continue to support the students from our department as well as through Aurora College to make sure that the students who are in those two programs will succeed, will become workers of...

We are going to continue to stay focused on the Small Community Employment Support Program. As you know, this money came at the last budget. We are going to focus on making sure that those dollars get spent. We are going to take a review after this year on how the funding was allocated and spent this year and whether or not we fully utilized that budget, and we will make some recommendations in the next fiscal year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As a government, we have a responsibility to ensure that all residents, all communities, in the Northwest Territories have an opportunity to access our programs, our services. Because of population sizes, we should not be discriminating or leaving people out. That program, back in the previous years, was not fully utilized. It was about $1.24 million. We are trying to find ways, innovative and unique ways, to ensure that our communities, our partners in our smallest communities, have that opportunity to have job creation. However, as the government, I do not think that any community...

This is a consensus government. We all have input into this in working together. If the committee has concerns, we can sit down and we can share some of these e-mails back and forth. If the Members of committee are concerned, we can also table some of our back-and-forth discussions just to make sure that the public understands the process of how we have been going about this foundational review and the timelines that we are trying to make and set. As I mentioned, this is consensus government. We all have a role to play in the decisions that are made in this House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I mentioned, we are going to get this foundational review. We set a timeline for March 31, 2018, and from that review, we are going to create a departmental response. We are going to share it with committee, we are going to share it with all Members of this Legislative Assembly, and as I mentioned, we are going to be working on a strategic plan going forward for the next 10, 20 years.

Nationally there are standard performance measures such as number of enrolments, graduations, and student satisfaction that can be used for existing and future programs. I recognize that a new accountability framework will need to be informed by the foundational review, and that's where we are heading moving forward. In the interim, the department will continue to work with the college to advance this work, but also work with the college on how do we best serve our students in the Northwest Territories who decide to get educated here in the North. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.