Bob McLeod

Every year we plan on a continuous basis, but for this fiscal year we started in December 2010. Thank you.

Thank you. The government’s objective is to meet last year’s target of 263 summer students and it’s our commitment for the department to achieve the 16 summer students that we hired, the same as last year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. Mr. Speaker. In December of last year the department met with the deputy ministers of all the departments and advised them of the process for hiring summer students, the need to register on the public registry and the need to have a continued support to hire summer students. We follow that up with regular updates at deputy minister meetings and also letters to the departments. We also raise them at ministerial meetings. So in every opportunity, we encourage departments to increase the level of hiring of summer students. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. To date we’ve hired nine summer students and I’d also like to advise the Members that the Progressive Experience Program is also fully subscribed. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents entitled 20/20: A Brilliant North Action Plan (2011-2012) and Results Report (2010-2011); and Report on the Staff Retention Policy Year Ending March 31, 2011. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled Northwest Territories Film and Media Arts Industry: Growing the Sector. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We met with the NWT Smart Communities Society and all the Yellowknife MLAs, including myself, and we recognize the good work that the Smart Society has been doing. We committed to working with the Smart Communities Society to deal with some of the programs that they have been working very hard on over the past three years.

I’d like to point out that over the past three years Smart Society spent about $11 million on their programs, and this year, in order to access $385,000 from the federal government, they were looking to expand their programs across the Northwest...

As of May 18, 2011, 3:00 p.m., we have 166 summer students hired: 91 are indigenous Aboriginal; 75 are indigenous non-Aboriginal; zero other summer students. We have 16 job offers out for signature: four to indigenous Aboriginals; 11 to indigenous non-Aboriginal; and one to other summer student, for a total of 16 job offers out there. Thank you.

In the short term we will be doing up a contribution agreement with the Smart Society, and the reason for that is, as everybody knows, there is an election coming up and we can’t commit a future government on future funding, so we will also endeavour to include that in the transition document.

I think it’s very important to note that in the future we’ll be looking at expanding to other initiatives, and long term, hopefully, it could become part of one of the TFC finance projects in the future. But that’s in the long term and we’ll have to wait and see what happens in the next government. Thank...

I believe that our goals are realistic. I think that with our education system and the fact that we’re having more Aboriginal people attending post-secondary education institutions, we’re seeing graduation rates increasing. We look at our summer student rates, for example, where we’re finally getting where 50 percent of our summer students are Aboriginal. We’re working on that area. I think it’s going to take some time. Some of the initiatives that were undertaken with our Aboriginal Affirmative Action Advisory Committee I think are putting us in the right direction. With the next government I...