Jackson Lafferty

Like I said, we had one particular meeting with the newly established committee and it’s very preliminary at this point. My department is compiling all of the information on those particular students, over 1,400 students that are out in the post-secondary and their fields of interest and the year they’re in and compiling that with the HR. They have their own data. It is quite a large amount that we need to work with. So, once all that information is compiled between the departments, we will be presenting to the standing committee in due time. Mahsi.

We recently had a meeting with a newly established committee in the employment development area and that’s my portfolio as well. So I have to work closely with HR where once we identify these students – obviously we can’t mention names because of confidentiality – we can, based on the area of the studies and the year that they’re in, working closely with the Human Resources department, what kind of jobs are available for a fourth year student or if they’re completing their diploma programming, if we can slide those individuals – there was a discussion here about direct appointments, enhancing...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Junior kindergarten for four-year-olds is recognized across the country as one of the best ways to provide quality, free and optional care for our children. Junior kindergarten is especially beneficial for parents and caregivers in 10 of our smallest communities where no licenced child care exists. Junior kindergarten will provide young children with a hands-on play-based program offered in our schools to support their development and learning.

Since junior kindergarten was announced at the start of this session, some questions have been raised about how junior kindergarten...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Member for meeting with the students, because as soon as I met with elected officials, they were really anxious and provided suggestions and ideas. There is one area, the cultural programming that the Member is referring to through the college, it won’t be through my department, but I can definitely work with the college, because there will be a college campus. The college will be going through their strategic planning, as well, and this will be related to them as well. The meetings with the students have been circulated, as well, the minutes, and then...

Various times when a client approaches our department through client service officers, the directors often get involved as well. It can be decided on a case-by-case basis where assistance is needed and required. Obviously, pertaining to that would be receiving the rent and how long the assistance will be provided. Those are just on an as-needed basis and particularly when a situation that we’re faced with today that these directors, the client service officers have been engaged with the client and will continue to do so.

When issues like this arise, my department, more specifically through client service officers, work with those clientele. We’ve been working with our clientele since the beginning of the month on a constant basis, trying to assist them in various ways either through a medical note and so forth. We provide funding to their needs according to the policies that have been highlighted, so it’s based on that, these individuals who qualify for eligibility for the standard rate for their community. Those are just some of the subsidies that we provide to those individuals that are in need of our...

Through the education renewal innovation we are going to look at the overall formula funding for our educational partners as well. We’ve been discussing this at the early stages back in 2007 until today, how we fund the school boards, how we fund the school programming, and based on the needs of the communities. This is an area that we’ve been told that we need to seriously look at formula funding to our school system. Currently it’s based on enrolment, and now we’ve been told why couldn’t it be based on base plus and go from there. Those are some of the areas we are contemplating with our...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This ratio 16 to 1 has always been there. It’s part of our legislation. We’ve been working with that with the school boards throughout the years. At the same time, we’ve been providing an additional $11 million so it can be based at 13 to 1 on the average throughout the Northwest Territories. It is through the legislation that was passed through this House, so that’s what we continuously work with throughout the years.

Part of the process of why it was established as different and diverse programming that we have, the threshold in various regions in communities is to attract those individuals into small, isolated communities. Most students that are graduating are university, post-secondary, college. So we can attract those individuals to the remote communities where they are very challenged because of a lack of job opportunities.

There are a variety of ways of dealing with the remissible loan in other venues that we have, but that’s the very reason why we want to attract those individuals into the small...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. We recognize that there are challenges within our Northwest Territories, along with other jurisdictions, as well, but as the Member indicated in his Member’s statement, we have one of the best SFA programs throughout the country. We improve our programming every now and then, changing our existing policies and enhancing through the review. We just conducted a review of SFA and part of the recommendations brought to our attention was some of the challenges that we’re faced with. So those are the discussions that we need to have as we move forward.

As indicated earlier, I...