Charles Dent

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I would also remind Members that they are welcome to work as advocates for their constituents, working in person with them. If at any time they are not satisfied that things are being done properly, the appeals system is set up to deal with that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What I said earlier is teachers are trained to deal with different grade levels in the classroom. It has always been the case that a teacher who's teaching Grade 4 would have some kids who are reading at Grade 3 level and some kids would be at Grade 5 level. It’s not unusual to have kids in a Grade 3/4 class reading at a Grade 2 or a Grade 6 level. Again, that’s not unusual. It never has been.

What we often hear from teachers in the Northwest Territories is they see more of that in the classroom here than what you might find in classrooms in other jurisdictions. So...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member has raised a lot of important issues and it will take me some time to address them. Inclusionary schooling is an idea where we say that everybody deserves an opportunity to be in a regular classroom, and the goal is to keep young people together by age grouping and working with them to realize their skills to the best of their abilities so that they can progress. It’s a program that has had tremendous success I think in the Northwest Territories. I know just a couple of weeks ago I was talking to some people in the Territories who are right now very...

I don’t believe we can get it to the Member that quickly, no. We have had people working on Mr. Villeneuve’s written question now for a few days and we have not managed to put all the information together. So, no. I would do my best to get him the information sometime tomorrow, but it won’t be before question period, no.

Mr. Chairman, I don’t believe they’re linked. I think the employer applies for a training-on-the-job subsidy. That’s not linked at all to the apprentice who goes by himself to book the schooling with their apprenticeship officer. We can follow up to make sure of that, but my understanding is it would be two separate programs and they’re not linked.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This would be one of the areas that some of the money might come from. It doesn’t come from just one area. The GNWT commitment to fund ASEP is in a couple of different places. So this is as good a place as any to talk about that program. The Member is right; we’re hoping that over the course of the ASEP program that there will be 800 people trained. They won’t all be miners, but they will be trained for jobs that are related to the industry.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will get that information to the Member. It’s certainly not many. I think it’s less than 50 since the inception of the appeals committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, that would be normally the case. The apprentice would have to work with the apprenticeship officer and make sure the training was booked through our offices but, yes, that’s possible and the training would be recognized, yes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As Members will likely remember, the Diamond Polishing Program at Aurora College did receive an award for being a world-class program and, yes, we are producing people who can move into the polishing factories and take jobs quite well. We’re aware that approximately 65 graduates of the program have been employed in Yellowknife in the secondary industry. We don’t track how many people were hired and basically did the apprenticeship type of training before the college started to get into the training. The first two years of training offered by the college didn’t...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One little comment before I answer the Member’s question. When I got a mortgage, I got it at the bank and I still had to reveal the most minute details of my life to the banker. If you get a mortgage, you do have to declare an awful lot of your private information.

As I said, this is the first step in moving our subsidy programs into one area in government. In the first year, nobody is going to see a change. It’s all going to be delivered through the LHOs; the same rules, the same standards, the same program. We are working with the standing committee to examine...