Jackson Lafferty

Obviously, I don’t have the detailed breakdown because we still have to get that information from the district education council, but as soon as we get that we can share it with the Members.

I totally agree with the Member that we need to move these obstacles that are in the way. That’s why I did a Minister’s statement, as well, that we are getting rid of some red tape within our department. This is an area that works well, whether it is the two-month advance for harvesting on the land where they can bring their families. We assist them. We’ve come around with the liability issues. We’ve done that in the past and we will continue to push that forward.

Just to touch on the first one, as the Members know, the Elders Program started just last September. We’ve just started our second semester now. We will be providing detailed information on the elders who are in school. At this point, we are still going through the first phase, the first year, but we will provide that information.

With respect to the geographical names, historical sites, traditional name, there has been some recent announcement with the Member’s riding and even prior to that with the Gwich’in, the Degee area. There are all these different traditional names that have been...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. I have committed to the Member that I will be meeting with the board of governors and report back to the committee. Mahsi.

The information I shared is $26.6 million based on the enrollment of the schools. Some school facilities are small, so they would get a smaller portion than the larger centres. It’s all based on enrollment. The contribution is based on that. Mahsi.

That’s exactly what we’ll be doing, working with our federal counterparts. They do have their stats as well. We provide our NWT stats and information to them. So, yes, I agree with the Member that we need to closely monitor this. Mahsi.

Yes, Mr. Chair. We have to work very closely with the school boards. From there, they decide on hiring the elders on need and the hours that they should be working in the schools. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Obviously, 2016 is coming very fast and I’m sure it will be looked at. We will be looking into it further. The college, again, community learning centres falls under that item, so we will be working closely with them when they are going through that review process of their facilities, so I am glad that the Member is referring to that. It will be addressed with the board of governors as well. Mahsi.

We have already started working very closely with communities, the district education authorities and district education councils to identify the infrastructure needs in the communities. Again, we are working very closely with Health and Social Services and Public Works and Services. So those are some areas we’ve identified based on the numbers that have been produced by the district education authorities and councils. So we’ve been working with those numbers in communities. The information that has been shared with us, we are fully aware of infrastructure in the communities. Again, based on...

Mr. Chair, that is the Small Communities Fund that we borrowed before. Now we are returning it, the $400,000, so it is going back to small community to focus on small community funding. We are very happy to get that back. Mahsi.