Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document entitled "Early Childhood Development Action Plan 2017-2020." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, and we also support our students going to those institutions for post-secondary program. In 2016-2017, there was over $60 million paid in Student Financial Assistance benefits supporting our students to go to post-secondary education down south. We continue to work with partners at the University of Alberta, University of Regina, University of Saskatoon, University of Victoria, for some programs that we currently are delivering within the Aurora College, and we will continue to enhance and build on those partnerships.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As all Members know, we are currently going to conduct the foundational review. I believe we're still waiting for feedback on the terms of reference that's before committee, and as soon as we get those terms of reference back on this foundational review, we'll go ahead and move and see the structure within our Aurora College system but also looking at utilizing our community learning centres a lot more and taking direction from our Skills 4 Success focus and also working with our partners' continued support with our other partners that run post-secondary programming...

As part of regular school businesses, both schools and education bodies have the responsibility to get any type of information that we work with these education authorities or initiatives of the department to the parents and to people that are doing work inside the schools. DE members are informed about school programs through their principals and their superintendents and the requirements such a program as well as it is required under the Safe and Caring Schools Legislation Regulation. It is a responsibility of our education authorities, our principals and superintendents to make sure this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As stated in the NWT Safe Schools Legislation and Regulations, every school in the NWT is required to offer healthy relationship programming to its students. Our department works with the University of Western Ontario Centre for School Mental Health to deliver a healthy relationship training program for NWT grades 7 to 10, teachers, and other school staff. The evidence-based program is for grades 7 to 10 students. It teaches students how to build relationship skills, understanding of making safe decisions about substance abuse, sexual relationships, bullying, as well as...

That is one of the goals of our strategy, is to keep a northern workforce here in the North working, as well as looking at recruiting others to come up here and help industry for the in-demand jobs that we are seeing that is out there. I don't have the exact data in front of me of how many are still here and how many we are recruiting, but I can get that information for the Member and share it with him.

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.