Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Member's concerns, as well as his interest in the support of post-secondary education programming, as well as our Student Financial Assistance program. In determining a student's eligibility for funding, Student Financial Assistance cannot take into consideration any courses that are considered upgrading, as they are not a post-secondary course.

However, if a student is enrolled in a full course load at post-secondary level, the student can enrol in additional classes that may be considered upgrading. In situations like this, Mr. Speaker, it is important...

Anyone knows that, when you are going through a procurement or a contract, it does take time. This is the same thing. We want to make sure we do it right, and we want to make sure that our students have the best opportunity for the best services and programs in post-secondary education, and we are committed to that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, have a couple of Pages who have been with us this week from Inuvik Boot Lake, Kaylin Harder and Isobel Jellema. Thank you for the hard work that you have done this week. We really appreciate it, and to all Pages who have helped us get through the days this week, thank you. Mahsi cho.

I know our career development officers at the regional centres do a great job of highlighting the Skills 4 Success document, the action plan, as well as our labour market information needs assessment. We work with partners with other departments. We work with our partners in business. We work with our partners in education, taking it into the schools as well as post-secondary. I will make sure that my colleagues within the Department of Health and Social Services, as we look forward to having more work force in the health centre for an ongoing purpose, do understand some of the needs of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We did release the Skills 4 Success action plan in November of 2016, so we are just coming up to about a year of having that out there in the public and in the communities throughout the Northwest Territories. We are working with our partners. We are working with schools. We are working with post-secondary institutions and CLCs to get that information out there on how we can address that. Specifically with the Sahtu region, if the Member recalls, we have four goals under the Skills 4 Success, and under each one we have a lot of priorities. To get a progress on all the...

We continue to try to see what we can do in terms of providing subsidies for our infants to four-, five-, six-year-olds who go into early childhood programming. Junior kindergarten I think was a very good step in terms of providing early childhood programming for families in our communities right across the Northwest Territories. We continue to see how we can address the high cost of living. I think one big one was changes to the Canada Child Benefit as well as changes to the NWT Child Benefit; I think really made a big improvement in that area.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also want to congratulate the Yellowknife Daycare Association on their accomplishments and the work that they've done to provide service here in Yellowknife.

I want to update the Members here that the GNWT is currently still in negotiations with the federal government regarding the funding agreements on early learning and child care. Negotiations are ongoing and I look forward to seeing that report and sharing that report and outcomes with this House, and I am looking for feedback. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I mentioned, we still do not know what the full enrolment rates are for students, JK students, entering the JK-12 system. We are working with education authorities to address that. I would like to see where the shortfall that the Member is mentioning is coming from. As I mentioned, we are using the 12:1 ratio that we all agreed upon moving forward within the system, and there is an additional $1.8 million to address that. I would like to maybe ask the Member if he would not mind sharing where he got his numbers from so that I can share that with my department.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I just wanted to clarify that when the Member says that I finally tabled the response to his written questions on September 19th, protocol does state, just for the public's record, that we table responses at the earliest convenience, which was September 19th and first day of this sitting, and does not have a reflection on myself or the staff.

Now, education authorities have been provided their 2017-2018 funding targets and have prepared their operational plans based on that figure. There is no shortfall in funding. Using the 12:1 ratio that we said we were...

The students who are eligible for the basic grant are entitled up to two return trips per academic year. Once students get an understanding of the program itself, if they are having problems kind of navigating around what the program offers, I really do encourage them to go and speak to their student service officers, as well as their guidance counsellors in the schools, but as I mentioned, two return trips if you're eligible under the basic grant.