Alfred Moses

Yes, previous to the decisions that I made we did meet with the board on a regular basis, and with the discussions in the May/June sitting we thought it was best to go in the direction in which we are removing it now with the foundational review that is going to look at everything. Prior to that, we did have those meetings with the board on a regular basis.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and with the removal of the board, it brought a focus on the review itself. We are going to be looking at the operations of the Aurora College, as well as the governance of Aurora College, and that is where we are focusing with this foundational review. When we get the results at the end of the review, we will be in a position where we can make the decisions moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We do want to get information from our partners, or non-government organizations, people who have a vested interest into getting our students into the NWT work force, and making sure that NWT students do succeed and have every opportunity through program services that we do provide, whether it is in the school system or the post-secondary institutions. We're going to make sure that we look at some of the information that we have. Now, this is the first time that the NWT ever had specific labour market information. We are going to use that to make sure that we give our students every...

I will have to get that information from the department, and then I will get it back to the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First off, I just want to thank the Member for his support and encouragement for our students participating in the National Skills Canada Competition, and good luck to those students as well. We do have some really good students up here in the skills area. Along with the strategy that we did table earlier and made comments about, we do have a board that is made up of mostly industry. It is an industry-driven board. So they do a lot of the work and we work through that board to get a lot of this information out. They come up with a lot of the ideas on how we should move...

Yes, currently Northern Studies 10 is a required course to graduate for all NWT students in the Northwest Territories. What is exciting about Northern Studies 10 is that the curriculum is around residential schools, so our students learn about residential schools and how they are part of our history in the North and throughout Canada. Northern Studies 20 and 30, there is a lot of interest with our Aboriginal governments who we have been consulting with. As I have mentioned in the House, Alberta is redesigning their curriculum, and we have our staff who are working with staff in Alberta to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, over the past year, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment has been making significant changes to the way it provides critical support for the territory's most vulnerable residents through its Income Assistance Program.

In 2016, the federal government announced the Canada Child Benefit. This new benefit had significant implications for our Income Assistance Program, and we revised our program so that the new Canada Child Benefit was not counted as income under the Income Assistance program. This change was intended to ensure all NWT residents...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and yes, we have had discussions with the partners that we are currently in agreements with, and as I mentioned, we are going through this foundational review right now. We are just waiting on the terms of reference feedback from standing committee. We will go ahead and proceed on that foundational review, and hopefully in the early new year, 2018, we will be moving forward and hopefully have some good structured programs in the 2018-2019 academic year.

Yes, we are currently working on that legislation. We are going to be doing some consultations during the summer months and then get the feedback from our stakeholders and partners on that and then proceed forward. However, we're still going to have to look at the foundational review of the port where we are going in terms of post-secondary, which I made a commitment to the House to look at that foundational review with the Aurora College but also getting feedback from other institutions and other stakeholders in the Northwest Territories regarding the legislation that the Member has been...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We did make a commitment during the presentation that we had to standing committee the other night and we'll make that commitment in the House that we will get those packages, Safe and Caring School packages to all Members should they want them, but we'll make sure that the honourable Member from Nahendeh gets the package and that all Members that would like one, we'll get one to them as well.