Charles Dent

Mr. Chairman, I am always pleased when I can be responsive and passionate and…

---Laughter

…I would like to point out that I have already responded to the Member that there is a new school for Yellowknife in the plan with construction starting in 2006-07. We have already identified in the five-year plan the need for the school. We now have to work with all the boards in Yellowknife to discuss the school and figure out where and how it’s going to go. The school itself is in the books. There hasn’t been any decision yet as to which school board is going to get it at this point, but we are going to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the evaluation should be completed in April. Then what we would hope to be able to do is if we are able to find any new money, use the evaluation of what programs that have been particularly successful, use that as a guide for where we should then start to emphasize the new money going towards, if we are able to find some new money. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very shortly after I became Minister I raised this issue with the department and asked that they do some work to take a look at what trends were across Canada. I, too, had heard from people that our system appeared to be falling behind in some areas. So it is something that we're watching. We're looking for opportunities that we may have to restructure the program somewhat to try and make it more relevant, more useful. That is, of course, a challenge when we have the fiscal climate that we have. But, yes, it is something that hasn't fallen off the radar, it is...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can certainly talk with my colleagues and make sure that they're reminded of this requirement.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a return to an oral question asked by Mr. Allen on March 17, 2004 regarding the constitutional questions related to attaining provincehood.

Mr. Speaker, the Aboriginal Summit is a society established by aboriginal organizations to represent their interests in the Intergovernmental Forum process, including the negotiation of the transfer of lands and resources to the Northwest Territories. While the Aboriginal Summit does not have constitutional status, many of its member organizations have lands, resources and self-government agreements that do recognize and...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The college does have a program for professional development for the staff and as part of the collective agreement, we are required to invest in professional development for staff at the college. So there are ongoing opportunities for the staff to improve their skills and the college will, of course, be regularly encouraging people to do that because they, too, would like to see people encourage their skills. Having said that, we don’t have any territorial standards for certification. The college does oversee people to make sure the people who are teaching are...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. These numbers are not completely finalized and that is why I said we would likely be coming back for a supplementary request. In the 2003-04 school year, the contributions to schools was $110.375 million. What we are expecting that will be in the next year is $113.233 million. That’s made up of UNW increases, cost for implementing curriculum, updating of average salaries for the enrolment change and to maintain the 15 percent inclusive schooling directive, basically.

Certainly, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Cabinet was certainly aware of the recommendation that the committee made, and there was some discussion about it. As I have said, I think we would all agree that investments in early childhood programming are significantly important investments, but we haven’t yet found a way to say that we have the money to put this back into the budget yet. As I have already said though, this is something that we are continuing to discuss. I am convinced that this is the area where we should try and look for an opportunity to reinvest, and we will continue to do that.

In terms of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is made up a couple of things. There is a bit over $800,000, as I mentioned in my opening comments, that relates to the expansion of the nursing program. Sorry; it's $269,000 due to the bachelor program and nursing program because of the increased enrolment. The $825,000 is a catch-up in student financial assistance. That's really just growth that has happened because of an increased uptake over the years. The money wasn't in our budget previously, but it got to the point that we couldn't cover it from other places and have now asked and received permission to...