Jackson Lafferty

We are very proud of our training program that we have initiated. It’s very successful, focusing on the northern hires. We can have a breakdown to aboriginal perspective. I guess we’re focusing on the northern perspective, the northern people that we hire that go through the transition period to development stages. Yes, I can share that with the Member.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I did indicate that the Fort Simpson John Tsetso Memorial Library does get funds from our department. They did receive, in 2008-09, $16,500; sorry, $21,000, and we increased that funding in 2009-10 to $53,000. So more than double. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, I did already commit that we are going to look at the overall program delivery and the funding we did distribute to the communities. Those are the important factors that we need to consider. I would encourage the Member, and also the Members, to deal with those individuals at the teaching and learning centres. They have the funding and the funding application comes into our department, as we usually ask them to contact the local school boards or teaching and learning centres about the funding that’s been provided to them. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, that school, as we talked about earlier, will be part of the next year’s capital planning process. We have the report back from Mr. Kindt highlighting the required space in the school, as the Member has referred to in his Member’s statement. I think it is time to look at that on a going forward basis, so this will be part of the next year’s planning cycle. Mahsi.

There have been direct appointments in the past, but we currently deal with inventory of people that we have on file and individuals that are moving up within the system are given, based on their credentials, based on the experience they provide to the organization and not only that, but to the aboriginal perspective, there are... The numbers we have within our corrections officers at North Slave Corrections is 36 positions are filled by aboriginal workforce and 27 are non-aboriginal workforce. There are 87 other full-time positions with 16 percent filled by aboriginal people. So those are...

In order to provide a response on the recommendations and move forward, we did identify some in-house funding to offset the costs, because we feel that this is an important factor and we need to follow through with and in an on-going forward basis, if we need additional funding on a long-term basis, because some of the recommendations will take longer than just a year or two. So those are the areas that we will certainly consider as part of the next years’ business planning cycle. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we do take all applications seriously as they go before us. We do provide funding to all the education councils where they distribute to all the schools. The aboriginal funding we get from the federal government, we offset the costs from our perspective, as well, through the GNWT expenditures. The funding has been allocated to the schools and we usually tell the folks, if they ask for funding for specialized projects, they should approach the local language groups first. Language centres, we provide funding to them, and those are special projects, so the money...

I totally agree with the Member that we definitely need to stress the importance of preserving our language or even our cultural way of life. Every opportunity we get with the federal Ministers that are here... Just recently Minister Strahl was here and I reminded him that there is a proposal that is coming, because I did meet with Minister Strahl in December and although we had a discussion about losing our language, I did touch on the Gwich’in as well. I use Gwich’in as an example when I meet with these officials. It was a very productive meeting where we talked about the submission of a...

Those are discussions we need to have with the community of Hay River French school board and our department identifying the gymnasium or the footprint of the actual facility right now. We’ve added on as a temporary measure to deal with the space crunch at that time. So, yes, we will continue to have ongoing discussions with the parties to move this forward with the federal government. So we will continue to do our part as the Department of Education, Culture and Employment with the community of Hay River. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. When we presented that in the fall time to provide a comprehensive response to the recommendations that are brought forward, we continue to work with different language organizations, language groups in the communities, just looking forward to this Aboriginal Language Symposium. Out of that we will produce a strategic plan to deal more in-depth of the discussion that needs to take place on recommendations. So I would say yes, at this point we are on par, but there is more work to be done. So, Mr. Chairman, those are the areas that we continue to have our priority in place...