Jackson Lafferty

Mr. Chair, there are nine positions. Five are new and four are from the existing pool that we have within Education, Culture and Employment. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment has approved five traditional Aboriginal names for the Mackenzie River under the NWT Geographical and Community Names Policy.

As the department responsible for community and geographical names in the Northwest Territories, we place a special emphasis on traditional Aboriginal geographical names as they are important to the culture, history and languages of the people of the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, the Mackenzie River is the largest and longest river system in Canada and continues to serve as a transportation corridor...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. It is very true that education, obviously, is a lifelong journey. It’s learning for life and when the Member talked about how we treat individuals, that we should be treating them with dignity, I fully support him on that level that we need to treat each other respectfully and with dignity as well. We’ve encountered that through the Income Security Program as an example that we’ve improved in so many ways of our professionals, how they interact with the public audience and vice versa. So we take that very serious.

Social challenges, obviously they’re always before us whether...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. First and foremost, obviously, the income security, improved programs. The Member asked if there have been any improvements, whether it be getting people off income security. We’ve had some changes with income security. Since 2009 we had approximately 3,400 cases and in 2013 it went down to 3,100 cases. There has been a drop of 8 percent over the last five years, approximately. That is a substantial change in our view. Obviously, we want to have a higher margin as well. That’s our target that we’re going to push forward with.

We are creating five employment service officers...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank the Member for addressing this particular area where it’s been addressed in the House as well. I did show interest a while ago, how the Finnish overhauled their education structure. This is an area that my department has been exploring and continues to do so because we have to learn from the best practices from other jurisdictions as well. If this is an area that will benefit the Northwest Territories, by all means, we will tackle that issue. It is at preliminary stages. We’re still compiling that information. It’s not only in that country, other...

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Obviously, when I talk about the passive restraint, we haven’t touched the school boards and also the Aurora College. More specifically to passive restraints, obviously it had an impact on our department, all the departments across the Northwest Territories. So I’ve been dealing with the school boards and the college on this particular subject, notifying them that we’re not going there at this time. I’ve respected that and I continue to work closely with the school boards at this level.

The whole ERI, Education Renewal and Innovation, obviously it’s a large initiative, it’s...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. We have a deputy minister. Today we have a deputy minister, we have an associate deputy minister, we have an assistant deputy minister, two of them. Now we have added Olin Lovely. We’re going to have Dana Heide soon to retire. Basically, Olin is taking over Dana Heide’s position. At the end of the day, it’s still the same numbers. It’s just a change of titles.

Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

There is, obviously, a 20-year plan for schools, Yellowknife and also across the Northwest Territories. Based on that, if there is a need for a retrofit or a renovation or replacement of schools, those are discussions that we need to have, my department and the PWS, and put into the hopper of the capital planning process. I don’t have that information in front of me. We will be debating that. We will be putting forward a proposal on the infrastructure that will be coming forward. What the Member is referring to, obviously the Yellowknife area, if there is going to be any infrastructure coming...

As I indicated earlier, we’re open to some ideas on how we can generate funding, based, obviously, on students. Currently, it’s based on students. Those are discussions that we need to have with the local organizations and also the DECs and DEAs as well.