Jackson Lafferty

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Support for apprentices is a key part of the Government of the Northwest Territories’ plan to maximize opportunities for Northwest Territories residents and contributes to achieving this Assembly’s goals of healthy, educated people and a diversified economy. The Department of Education, Culture and Employment, along with our partners and apprentices, celebrate the success of the Northwest Territories apprentices and journeypersons during the Northwest Territories Apprenticeship and Occupational Certification Week, February 7th to 11th.

The department supports training and...

The federal funding, I don’t have that information specifically. I just highlighted our department and Health and Social Services’ contribution to Aurora College. I will gather that information on federal funding, if it does exist, to the Members.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The program that we deliver through Aurora College, the funding that’s required is $2.7 million from ECE to Aurora College for a bachelor of nursing, special work in nursing, health access programs. As well, Aurora College receives additional money from the Department of Health and Social Services in the amount of $511,000 to cover the masses of Nursing, Nurse Practitioner and Introduction to Advanced Practice programs. This is funding that’s been required for these programs.

There have been numerous discussion and consideration taking into account a number of factors when deciding when and where the reduction will happen, including where the positions were initially established, with the funding and the current client caseload again. So, yes, to answer the Member’s question, these have all been taken into consideration when we were deciding.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. As Members know, the transfer of the positions back to NWT Housing Corporation on the Public Housing Rental Subsidy has been active. As a result, there has been a loss of administration dollars within our Department of ECE. ECE is required to reduce the number of client services offices across the Northwest Territories. Those individuals were also handling the case of public subsidy units, public housing rental subsidy area, and then at the same time the client services officers were responsible for income security. Now the responsibility is with NWT Housing Corporation so...

Mr. Speaker, we’re definitely open to discuss any potential opportunities with respect to a facility or programming. We did have a meeting in the past. I’m sure those individuals or organizations are listening to these House proceedings, so by all means, if they want to meet with us as the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, we are more than willing to meet with them. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The college campus itself has been in discussion for quite some time now. We’re fully aware that the lease is up in 2012, and we are working towards possibly extending the lease until we have a plan in place. We probably have to do that anyway, because it will take a few years to develop a plan of action and then find a suitable location, if that needs to happen.

Mr. Speaker, this is an area where we met with several other potential partners as well. We’ve had numerous discussions with different organizations on how we can move forward. This is an ongoing piece of work that...

Our GNWT and ECE are supportive of having more NPs in the Northwest Territories. We will continue to have this discussion with Health and Social Services on what kind of options are there. If there’s a budget issue or financial issue or program delivery is an issue, a number of students are in the program so those are discussions that we need to have. We have had contacts within the last couple of weeks, so we’ll continue to do that. With progress, we’ll let the Members know.

Part of our plan of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, working closely with Health and Social Services and also the college, is to continue delivering this program. If there are any changes in the program delivery or if there is an issue with the funding, then we definitely need to sit down and discuss our objectives and options and we’ll definitely let the Members know if there are any changes.

I appreciate that the Member is persistent. At the same time, we have to look at the caseload. If there is an increase in the caseload for a client services officer to perform extra duty on income security, this is an area we can definitely look at. We will seriously monitor the caseloads in the region.