Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Right now the average across Canada for tuition is about $4,000 a year, and our program provides a grant of $3,500. So students' families have to come up with about $500 towards the cost of tuition on average. There will be a number of programs, obviously, that are higher than that and some that are less expensive. But our program provides a maximum of $3,500 towards tuition, and that hasn't changed for quite some time, since the program was redesigned a number of years ago.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There has been no funding identified for the strategy, per se. The strategy is more to cover how the government responds overall. The strategy itself doesn't need funding, but it would guide us in how we would handle contribution programs and so on.

Thank you. There are two separate things that we're talking about in that paragraph. The first is the aboriginal language and culture-based education directive. That's the issue I explained to Mr. Delorey that we're going to try and reach an agreement with education authorities as to how monies will be spent supporting aboriginal language and culture-based education.

As a separate topic, I've also broached the subject with the Chairs of the education councils about the need to be able to demonstrate to legislators that the money that we're spending on education is in, in fact, improving the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The travel is $480,000; materials and supplies, $234,000; purchased services, $157,000; utilities, $227,000; contract services, $1.388 million; fees and payments, $563,000; other expenses, $21,000; computer hardware and software, $383,000.

Mr. Chairman, I would have to ask the college board to give us a breakdown if they could. We don’t fund them by regions. We don’t track it that way. We fund the college and the board, and the board, like a school board in Yellowknife, for instance, spends their money as they see fit. They don’t tell us how much they are going spend to at each campus they have.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will follow up on the Member’s advice.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In our recent discussion at the end of February with the board Chairs, the issue of trades and the demand for trades training in the North was certainly a big topic of discussion. So I think that we are already taking that opportunity. There has been a real change in emphasis in the past six or seven years in education in the Northwest Territories in what sort of emphasis we put on trades training. There are so many future jobs in the Territories that are going to require trades training, that it really is an area that has a tremendous amount of opportunity. It's...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, this isn’t a number that the boards have ever reported to us. Like I say, most boards did not charge any extra fees, so it’s not something that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment was ever involved in. We could write a letter requesting the amounts that they were getting, if the Member would like, and we can pass that on to her. Thank you.

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.