Jackson Lafferty

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment supports community-based teacher education programming which provides increased access to students across the Northwest Territories. Graduates of these programs will increase the number of Aboriginal educators in our school system.

Currently Aurora College is delivering the community-based Teacher Education Program, including a community educator preparation component, for both the Teacher Education and Aboriginal Language and Cultural Instructor programs. In 2010-11 the college began offering the first year of the Aboriginal...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Part of this government’s overall goals and objectives are to work on decentralizing to the regions. Part of that is to have qualified people from the regions and from the communities. Of course, we’re always pushing for the education system into the communities and into the regions so we can have more qualified people from our regions so they can tackle all of those job opportunities that will be coming out, whether it be the pipelines or government jobs or community government jobs. Not only that, we also supported the Small Community Employment Support Program out of...

As I stated, we try to assess those individuals who are struggling with their payments as best as we can as income support clientele. As you know, income support covers the Northwest Territories with the 33 communities that we service and we cannot cover all mortgage payments, but we do cover to some degree some payments so they can get by through a couple of months or during the winter transition period. So we do assist those clientele as best we can according to our Income Security Policy. Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Over time we amended our policy on the income support security system to reflect the costs of being in the Northwest Territories. There is a mortgage payment. It is covered up to three times in the lifetime of the clients. We do assess to some degree on the mortgage as well. Not only that but the client should not be building assets while accessing income support as well. There are subsidies in place. We have amended those subsidies in 2007 to reflect the cost for the Northwest Territories. We will continue to make those changes as necessary.

Yes, there is. Again, our overall goals and objectives of this government have highlighted those community employments as a priority for us. Not only that, but through my Department of Education, Culture and Employment we have a Labour Market Agreement that we provide training and services to the small communities and we’ll continue to do that. There is a training opportunity in that manner, in that fashion. Not only that, again reiterating the partnerships we have with the communities, with the mining industries, we do have a quarterly meeting with the industry representatives as well. We...

That is what we’re doing. We’re topping up the wage that they’ve earned, and if they can’t get by on certain months, we do assist them. They have to fit the criteria, as well, where how much they make per household and how many children they have and so forth, and the cause of the factors as well. So we are subsidizing those individuals that are a pressing need for the Northwest Territories.

We realize there is a high cost of living in the Northwest Territories, so it’s all based on that as well. So income support we always say is just a last resort, because we want to have independence in...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled “Annual Report on Official Languages 2010-2011.” Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

This particular review has been undertaken for the last couple of months now and we will be going through until next year. We’re at the preliminary stages, so those are options that I can certainly take into consideration. Mahsi.