Caroline Cochrane

Quality and safe education in the community; I am guessing you are meaning facilities in the community. Student safety is a primary focus within all education systems in the Northwest Territories. Every school has a safety plan. We make sure that we take care of the children as best as possible. Incidents will occasionally happen. As soon as incidents happen, we go in. We do an investigation. We make sure that that issue hopefully wouldn't happen again. We look for solutions for that. I know that, if there are issues with gyms, et cetera, if we don't have that support, then we look at other...

As stated, I did phone the president and was asking where the direction came from, recognizing that she does have the authority to direct the council and to direct the staffing, as the speaker for the whole board. Where did the direction come from? That is something that they are looking at.

I did take note that the MLA did state within her opening statement that it is arm's length, and it needs to be arm's length. Our act says that they can advise the Minister on issues, and I can refer them back to the council for consideration. It says that they can provide assistance to the Minister in...

What is the council doing wrong? I have no idea, Mr. Speaker, what the council is doing wrong. In fact, for the last two years, I have been asking the council to meet with them. The council has only met during session, and I have gone to them when I can meet with them. It is during session, and I have only been able to go in for a lunch hour and say hi and leave to come running right back to session.

I have asked them over the last two years that I want to meet with them. I have given no direction, period, to the Status of Women Council. I know that I have been accused of giving directions, but...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The portables that are coming in actually will be retained by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. In previous years, we bought portables and we gave them to the school authorities, and then it was hard to transfer them.

They will be used for the school that will be replaced. It will be a couple of years, and then, at that time, we will be determining the best usage for them. At this point, we are not handing them over to Infrastructure. They will stay as assets for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to be used where needed. Thank you, Mr...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, that Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Social Assistance Act, be read for the second time. The bill amends the Social Assistance Act to extend the term of appeal board members from two years to up to four years and to extend the list of public bodies with which information shared under the act may be shared to include Indigenous governments. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The first time we tried to do an evaluation was in the Inuvik campaign school, and that time, it was actually just another woman in another department who was willing to do that work. Sad to say, that woman was an affected employee, and that kind of stopped the work before it was done.

We did have a draft, though, and I do apologize to the MLA from Yellowknife Centre. I thought I had shared that with her in confidence, and if I haven't, then I am more than willing. If she would let me know, then I will share that draft in confidence with her, because it never got finished, but I apologize...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Status of Women Council actually was doing campaign schools within the communities for a couple of years. I am not sure how long, in all honesty, but we found that they were only working at getting women into the Legislative Assembly. Not that we don't need to get women into the Assembly, but we do need to branch out into other directions; so we looked at their model, and we looked at designing it to meet better needs.

We took it internally in the short term to be able to address the issues, such as getting more women into municipal or Aboriginal governments or...

Gyms are important in communities. Children need to have physical activity, so the Department of Education does try to make sure that there is some kind of facility. In communities where there are under 150 students, it is not feasible at this time to actually put in a school gym, so what the department does in that case, they try to work with the community to make sure that there is activity to a facility that children can access as a gym. So, in that community, I know that they are looking at building a new gym or extending it, so, in that case, we are more than willing to work with the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Most Members know that I just took over this portfolio a month ago, and so I didn't know what was going on before that time. However, I did ask the department, and they told me that no options were developed specifically for the community. However, at a community expansion meeting held in October 2017, the department confirmed that there was sufficient space on the land reserve where a larger community gym could be built. I don't believe, according to my notes, that they looked at different options, but they did reaffirm that the space that the school was on could...

Yes, during one of the dinner events that I went to, I did tell them at that time that I wanted to meet with them, that I wanted to have at least a four-hour meeting that we could actually talk about the direction and how we could work together. I did meet with them, and like I had said earlier, I also met with them during lunch hours, but it was only a matter of going in, saying a cordial "glad to work with you," and then I had to run back. I don't really consider those actually directional meetings, and nor should I, because it is not my authority to give direction to them.

The honourable...