Charles Dent

Mr. Chairman, these were in the 20-year plan, but each year we go through the plan and a lot of it depends on population. What has happened is that Yellowknife has gotten to the point where we can predict when the schools will reach full occupancy, and so that caused that one to get moved into the system. So they are always identified as somewhere in there being needs. But every year we go through the plan and some communities are going to move around depending on the occupancy load of the schools, on the physical condition, the safety issues that we have to deal with. They aren’t new...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Subsequent to the Member’s question in the House and my response to him that he has referred to, I heard from the Federation of Labour and they offered to meet with me to discuss this issue. I have accepted that offer and indicated to them that I am prepared to meet to carry on these discussions. I am purely confident that unions will understand that northerners expect to see significant northern involvement in employment in the construction of pipelines in the North, and I think it is incumbent on us, through the Minister of RWED, to negotiate a good agreement that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sure the Minister of Finance was listening to the Member’s earlier comments and will be prepared to respond to the Member at an appropriate time on those comments.

On her second point when it comes to the apprenticeship issue and the human resource support that we provide, I have indeed heard the concern expressed by Members here, and I have asked the department to take a look at that. There is a review underway right now. We currently have six staff supported by career development, or career centre staff across the Territories, but we are examining the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have good schools in all regions of the Northwest Territories and we’ve had people who have gone on to become lawyers, teachers, professors, doctors from all regions. So our plan is to continue to support the schools in the Northwest Territories. There is no plan to develop any process to support students to attend schools outside the Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The GNWT still holds the lease, so the lease is with the GNWT for the facility with NACC. But officials at the department believe that they are fulfilling all the requirements of the lease.

Madam Chair, there may be a slightly higher cost to the boards over the $100,000. We're hoping that we can get them to operate for that amount. Remember we're just starting them in July of this year, so it's not a full year of programming. It will be close to that, we think. So the goal is to have most of the money going to programming and keep the cost of the boards as low as possible.

This $100,000 is reflective of what was transferred from the Legislative Assembly. That's the amount of money that the Assembly had in its budget to operate these boards, and when the responsibility for the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Courses that teach the sorts of things the Member was talking about -- I believe it’s called Healthy Relationships -- is part of the health curriculum and is required to be taken. I think it starts in Grade 8 or so. There is a requirement that it be taught. I can tell the Member that when I was Minister five years ago, I would often take the opportunity when I was visiting schools to ask high school students their thoughts about AIDS and so on. I found that the students were actually very well informed about sexually-transmitted diseases and the implications, yet...

Mr. Chairman, this might be a different kind of wood pile than the Member is used to seeing in Fort Resolution. Most of the expenses for this year are planned for the Beaufort-Delta region and the Sahtu where we have a number of schools where the piles underneath them are rotting out much more quickly than had been expected.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, to answer the Member’s first question, there is still $251,000 for the Literacy Council to maintain their program. Where that money is coming from is federal monies that we are going to be flowing through to them to allow their programming to continue. The federal contribution is carrying on for another two years. So even though the territorial money is sunsetted after three years, we did have some federal money for the same source of programs.

The Member had asked about what sorts of things had been cut. I had mentioned the language nests, the...

Mr. Chairman, that is a very difficult one for us to break out because it is included in all of the different tasks. It includes everything from colleges and ABE literacy. I am not sure; I could give a more detailed breakdown I guess by task if that would help Members, but I can’t break out where the fees would necessarily be in each of these. So I am asking for the direction of committee here. I can provide a much more detailed breakdown, but I can’t answer the question as to how to break out other expenses and separate out the fees, because some of it is included in each of the tasks and...