Caroline Cochrane
Range Lake

Statements in Debates

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 77)

I am a bit confused because post-secondary education, of course, attendance is not mandatory at all. That is about the student actually applying for their own future. I don't think there is any post-secondary across Canada that makes attendance be a requirement. Like I said, though, there are requirements that say children who are over six and under 16 must be registered in school. Although it doesn't say they have to attend every day, they need to attend to be able to keep up and to be successful. It is an issue that we need to address. I am not willing to say it is parents. I am not willing...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 77)

Attendance rates are a huge concern. I don't really have the answer to why they are not improving. Everybody, in my opinion, has been kind of blaming everybody else. Everyone is afraid of it. They are saying, "Is it the parents' responsibility? Is it the Aboriginal governments' responsibility? Is it the community's responsibility? Is it the teachers' responsibility?" Those questions are not okay for me.

I have actually brought it up at the Education Leaders, which has all of the chairs and the superintendents from all of the regions' 10 education boards, councils, authorities. I said this is an...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 76)

When I was travelling to the three communities three or four times, I had heard from staff and from students, et cetera, that they want to have great programming and that we need to have programming for northern students. People were a little bit concerned about national and international students, but it's a good thing. The reality is that our numbers in the Northwest Territories will make it challenging if we didn't look outside of the Northwest Territories.

I want to emphasize, the post-secondary that we provided in the Northwest Territories has to be for northern people based on Northern...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 76)

Yes. Actually, we're going to be presenting to standing committee as well on June 5th, so I'm going to give a little bit of heads up to what we're presenting on June 5th, I suppose. We've completed the survey. We've gone across the Northwest Territories. We've reached actually almost 750 surveys. I don't have the number on hand. We'll present it to standing committee. We did a real focus on youth, 29 and under, which I'm very happy to report that we've actually been very successful in getting those voices. With that, we're still breaking down what the vision will be. That process is still...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 76)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know that I am breaking convention a little bit because I don't really have a constituent, but I do want to recognize the women who are in the House today who are watching the proceedings. I think it is pretty evident that there are not enough women in the House, and so I am really proud to see them and, like my colleague, I am hoping that I will see their names on ballots. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 76)

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that, on Tuesday, June 4, 2019, I will move that Bill 57: An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 76)

We've often heard it all along saying, "we need to get this right." With that polytechnic, we need to get this right. This isn't going to be something that's done too fast. The first thing was developing our vision, trying to find out what are our strengths; what programs should be done. One of the critiques that was in our college foundational report is we tried to do too much for everyone. Sometimes, when you try to do too much, like over 200 mandate question areas, you don't get enough done to address them all. You get spread too thin. We are trying to figure out what our specialization...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 76)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As for the term "lobbying," direct lobbying to build our polytechnic university, at this point, we have not. I know that the federal government is working with us. They just gave us $4 million, I believe, for the Centre for Mining and Industry in Fort Smith that was recently opened, which I attended just a couple of months ago. Word on the street is that they are actually looking at post-secondary universities in the north all over, so we are trying to get in on that team to find out what they are doing and what their interests are. Once we have an implementation plan...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 75)

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, the inclusive schooling money is applied to the junior kindergarten and the kindergarten, the four- and five-year-olds. I do want to clarify, Mr. Chair, that I feel that it's unfair to say that junior kindergarten is not working. We just started. This is the second time that we have actually done the results. The first one was six years ago. We just had the baseline data. We don't even know how correct that was. We just implemented junior kindergarten across the Northwest Territories in the last couple of years. It's really premature to say that the program is not...

Debates of , 18th Assembly, 3rd Session (day 75)

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do need to clarify my last answer. The last time I had seen a briefing note, it was 19, but we are actually up to 26 now. The total number of scholarships is 30 scholarships available a year, and we are at 26 as of today. They are given out in the fall. Thank you, Mr. Chair.