Mr. Speaker, when I talk about the action plan, yes, it’s been directed to us that we need to have more time to engage the general public because it will be their document, their solutions, their ideas and their suggestions. So I have allowed more time for that to happen. We want to deliver a draft action plan by this fall – that’s the target date – and deliver that in the House potentially I am hoping by February session or sooner. It all depends on the engagement that we’re conducting.

When the Member is talking about using existing resources or new funding, those are a mixture of information...

Madam Chair, that is correct; they are two separate issues. We have been talking about the collection, how we can collect or be aggressive in that area. I’ve been dealing with my department on how to address those matters at hand because we have to take the Auditor General’s recommendations seriously into consideration, so that’s what we are doing. Those are two separate issues with requests of the $5 million to increase. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to make it clear. If I was forcing the school boards to use their surplus, I would take all the surplus back, which I am not doing. It is at the discretion of the school boards to use the funding towards educational programming, and we highly encourage them to do that. Some of the boards have, as I stated in this House, substantial surpluses. When it comes to enrolment, if the enrolment goes up, then obviously the financial aspect of the school boards, their contribution increases as well. Those are areas that we continue to closely monitor and provide additional funds...

Mahsi. Aurora College Board of Governors does work with the students. We deliver the best program we possibly can in the Northwest Territories, along with our partners further down south at various institutions. We’ll continue to make that a success. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. To my left is Jolene Saturnino. She’s the director of income security within the ECE department. Also, to my right is Ken Chutskoff, legislative counsel within Justice. Mahsi.

Mahsi. When I met with the Board of Governors, I addressed all of those issues. Any issues that come to my attention, I address with them. We work out solutions. When it comes to the contacts of certain individuals, private e-mails of private individuals’ contacts, those are at the discretion of the board if they want to release that information. But they do have a website. All the contact information, phone numbers, e-mails, it’s all on the website. They even have a student representative as well. We are going to a June meeting in Inuvik and I believe the Member will be there as well.

So, we...

Mahsi, Madam Speaker. I am pleased to introduce Bill 24, An Act to Amend the Student Financial Assistance Act. The purpose of this legislation is to raise the maximum aggregate of the principal amounts of all student loans that may be made by the Government of the Northwest Territories.

The maximum aggregate principal amount of student loans that the government may lend under the Student Financial Assistance Act is currently set at $40 million. The amendment proposes to increase this amount to $45 million for the fiscal year 2014-2015 and thereafter. This change is required to allow the...

Yes. Of course, the people of the North are our most important resources, and first and foremost, we want to ensure that Northerners in the Northwest Territories have the skills and knowledge for their employment success. That’s our priority. We also recognize that there are growing pressures on the government, not just our government but the federal government, industries, business, to respond to the increase in the labour market demands due to changing demographics. Those are some of the important discussions that we have had with Jason Kenney just the other day as well. It’s important that...

With any organization there is a budgeting process. We have to work with that. As the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, we provide public money to these organizations. There is the accountability issue and transparency issues, so we’ll continue to support that.

I just did commit to that. Sometimes when it comes to a review, it does take time, but we will provide that information to the Members. Mahsi.