Jackson Lafferty

Mr. Chair, I guess part of the reason will be we’ve been working closely with them. We feel that we are in partnership with them, working closely together with them, the Government of Nunavut. At the same time, to have artifacts stored in Nunavut in a facility, as you know, it’s a high cost over there. But they’re realizing that they need their own facility, so they are working towards that and are in the planning stages. They are working closely with our department, as well, as they move forward as part of their capital planning process. Mahsi.

Mr. Chair, I’m glad the Member is raising this profile because what we have on paper states that there is a committee struck and established but it is a different version from Member’s, so we definitely need to follow through with that.

For the 16 different parties that are involved, I’d like to see a training plan, as the Member does. I would like to see a pamphlet as the Member is referring to. Once we leave here, that will be my instruction to the department, to coordinate that, get the latest status, what they’ve been working on, training needs and so forth. I think that’s what the Member...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. This has been a work in progress for a number of years now. For 2012-13, as stated in the business plan, the revenue generation of a million and then it increases by $20,000 every year after that up to 2016. The Government of Nunavut is fully aware that they need their own stand-alone museum to store their artifacts. We are working with them on this and we have made it clear to them that our storage area has also got capacity that we need to look after within our own artifacts as well. They are fully aware of it. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Creating a trades centre has been brought up in this House as well. We are fully aware of the activity that is happening in the Sahtu region and also in other regions. That’s why we are working closely with the regional training partners in that area and also including the ITI department as well. The college needs to be involved, the Aboriginal organizations and also industry. We’re compiling all the information from them. We need to find out the community’s needs, the individual needs, what kind of training that’s going to be required, what can the college deliver and what...

Yes, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. We talk about the process and there has been a lot of discussion on this particular subject over the years. We can provide the detailed documentation. We’ve been working with various partners, as I stated on the option paper that came before us. What’s the status today? We can provide that detailed information to the Members.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I agree with the Member that this is a huge opportunity for us to look at, is the active growing throughout the Northwest Territories. We realize the higher cost of living the further up north you are. Part of the healthy choices that we are working on within our department, MACA and Health and Social Services, we have identified certain areas of initiatives, targets. What the Member is referring to is actual curriculum that he wants us to potentially explore. By all means, I will be directing my department to explore those options and those key areas. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. As you know, we’re not here to talk about capital, but the Member alluded to planning stages. This is an area that I’m very interested in having discussion with various partners that I introduced in this House before. Part of the discussion I want my department to have is to reintroduce those option papers that we initiated in I believe it was 2010. The existing facilities in Yellowknife, I’m sure we can utilize one of the facilities, as we indicated before. That’s just an option that we want to work with.

Another option was to work with potential partners building a place...

This particular area has been a key point of our discussion. It took a bit of time to get here. We want to have somewhat of a perfect system where elders are in the schools, and how we can get around where they’re being penalized if we pay them and they get the clawback from their federal pension, federal old age security and so forth. That’s what we’ve been trying to work out. I’m happy to say that we’ve finalized that area and we want to deliver elders in schools as part of our team within the schools starting this fall school year. That’s our target date. I want to see the elders. Obviously...

Part of the education renewal I talked about in particular in this House, there are six different pillars. One of the pillars is the small schools, how we can provide further enhancing the programing into the schools and the funding formula attached to that. Obviously, there will be numerous discussions pertaining to that Aboriginal content. The smallest communities, when we talk about capital and programming and so forth, it’s all based on enrolment. I have instructed my department to look thoroughly about how we can improve that programming. We will be focusing on the small community schools...