Charles Dent

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I understand it, when the program was started three years ago, the intention that was always stated was to review it at the end of the program. So the review process wasn't started until fairly recently. So it hasn't been an ongoing review; it is something that has been recently undertaken.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is no money going to administration. It’s all program. No additional staff at all.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If memory serves me right, in this current year there is $200,000 in minor capital going to repairs in that area.

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, there have been no formal requests for the department to reimburse boards for those monies so far. I think it’s important to remember that there are only a few boards that actually charged fees. Most boards in the Northwest Territories did not charge any extra fees. We would be hard pressed to justify giving extra money to some and not to all.

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...

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. 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.