Jackson Lafferty

Mahsi. With this outcome, we can certainly clarify what’s truly happening. It’s just a matter of making calls to the superintendent or the board level and reconfirm where the students are at, but at the same time, the Member is asking for an additional teacher in the community to what was required based on their funding. It will be at the board level to deal with those eight students that have been brought forward to our attention. Mr. Speaker, yes, we will clarify the matter once and for all. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my department works closely with the Beaufort-Delta education council and we get information directly from them. The information we got from them is exactly what I quoted yesterday. There might have been a miscommunication, but that’s what we received. We do have a superintendent who continues to have a discussion on this particular issue, as well, between our department and also the Beaufort-Delta, to deal with the one outstanding student that I referred to yesterday and how we can work with those students and then continue on our dialogue where if some of the...

This particular program is quite unique and the cost factor itself is approximately $800,000 to operate. It does consist of classroom and library resources, mostly level books. They are the key to success literacy program and make it possible for teachers and students to track their reading achievement progress. Those are the specific areas, $800,000, which also covers the literacy coaches in those communities.

I, too, truly enjoyed the tour of the South Slave with the Member. I believe it was a real successful South Slave tour. I can certainly highlight some of the key initiatives that have been undertaken since 2006.

Just over 50 percent of the South Slave students met or exceeded the standards of the Alberta Achievement Tests for grades 3, 6, and 9 after the second year, for the South Slave students reading at or above the Canadian norm this year, 2009. We are making a huge improvement in this area. In 2008-2009, South Slave students were at 71 percent, at or above the Canadian average. Also, 2009...

Mr. Speaker, as we celebrate Education Week, I would like to draw attention to an important tool that is helping many Northerners receive important trades training in smaller communities. I’m talking about Aurora College’s Mobile Trades Training Lab in the Beaufort-Delta.

In 2008, the college worked with Education, Culture and Employment, the Government of Canada and partners in aboriginal governments and industry to secure the lab. It offers a 900 square foot shop that is fully self-contained with its own forced air oil furnace heating and power generators. It also comes equipped with an...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, to my right is Ian Rennie, legislative counsel, legislation division. To my left is Mike Reddy, senior policy analyst, policy and planning division. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I am pleased to be here today to speak about Bill 10, Exemptions Act. I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Social Programs for its review of this bill.

The Exemptions Act is used when one person owes money to another. It limits the types and amount of property that can be seized or garnisheed by a creditor as part of the enforcement process. The current act was enacted in 1948 and is now very out of date. The amounts of money and categories of property that can be kept haven’t changed since then, other than a change to the amount of wages that the debtor...

Mr. Speaker, by all means. Those are consultations that we need to have. We do have representatives at the regional levels; not just Sahtu region but other regions. We depend on their expertise because they’re fully aware of the community needs, the community programming, and what’s needed, what’s lacking. So those are areas that we need to have continuous consultation and dialogue with the Sahtu region.

Mr. Speaker, yes, we will have a dialogue with them. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I would be more than willing to visit the communities of Nunakput and other communities as well, just to visit the schools, the board chairs, the board councils. Those are ongoing initiatives that we are currently undertaking and we are making commitments to visit all schools. Mahsi.

We’re not hiding behind the Beaufort-Delta Education Council. We gave them the empowerment; we gave them the funding, because they’re the experts at the regional level. They provide us advice, recommendations, and also going forward on decision-making. So, Mr. Speaker, we’ve heard over and over from this Assembly and the First Nations assembly, First Nations community, the communities, that they want to have the power to make decisions. We gave them that authority and we have to respect that.

In my role as Education Minister, we do have the Education Act that we follow. All across the board...