Charles Dent

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...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe I indicated to standing committee that we expect to have it completed by May.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, it's certainly an area that I recognize the importance of investing in. I think all of my Cabinet colleagues do, as well. It is something that we have had some discussion about, and we are certainly interested in seeing what we can do. We will look at whatever options we can. Without having rolled it out, just off the top of my head I know that non-government organizations don't like to see short-term funding, and I don't know how excited they would be about quarterly funding because it's tough to get staff to commit for programs that you don't know...

No, there is no change to the program. We are still going to have $1,750 maximum per semester for the tuition, for example. This is really related to a volume increase. We’ve had a significant increase in the number of students who are accessing student financial assistance and so that’s really the biggest driver, the numbers of people taking it. The loan side would be driven by cost to cost increase.