Jackson Lafferty

Yes, that is part of the plan. The staff grant will go directly to the staff. As you know, some of the staff have worked over 20-plus years. This will be an incentive for them to be more committed and further their education if they want to. We provide the incentive for them primarily focusing in those areas. We provide the funding directly to the staff so there’s no implication on organizations, whether it is expenditures or budget planning process. This has been already indicated. We spoke with numerous workers, as well, and they are fully aware that this money is available to them. It’s...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Monday, February 16, 2015, I will move that Bill 45, An Act to Amend the Workers’ Compensation Act, be read for the first time.

Mahsi. What I can say today is that it is happening with the Board of Governors when they’re meeting at each campus, they allow opportunities for students to express their concerns as well. As the Minister, I continue to work with the Board of Governors, like the school boards across the Northwest Territories, I work with them.

So we need to build on our relationship that we have and I will continue to do so. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The first time the question was raised in this House I did instruct my deputy to follow through with the president of the college to provide the e-mail address on their website for the general public to have access to them. So, based on that, it should be in the works. If not, then I need to follow up on where it stands. But that was the last discussions we had with the college. Mahsi.

As I stated, we’ve done a variety of research across the North. That also includes the daycare operators and early childhood workers as well. Based on the results that came back… We provide funding to the daycare operators, whether it be the mortgage, whether it be other areas of subsidy for them to operate, whether it be day homes, even at daycare facilities.

The early childhood workers, as I stated earlier, are one of the lowest paid wages across the country but more so in the Northwest Territories, and this is one way of attracting more individuals to pursue early childhood worker...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When we first introduced the grant, the staff grant with the stakeholders across the Northwest Territories, we did our research. We found out that we have one of the lowest paid workers, early childhood workers across the Northwest Territories. We want to give them incentives for them to pursue higher education, even as far as certification, diploma degrees and even masters’ programs so they can come back to our organizations and work for us. We wanted to provide some incentives, so we have had research done and talked to a number of stakeholders. Those are the results we...

Mr. Speaker, this is the very reason why we’re doing the hundred mini iPads in March, March 31st, just to have a review of the testing of the technology, the cost factor and the rolling out of the program, where we may run into some obstacles or developing some programming of apps and so forth and we do have a monitoring mechanism in place as well. The Member was referring to how we evaluate and monitor, so those are areas that we have established, as well, for this particular area and also other projects in play. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I can assure the Member that it’s not. Since 2013-14 and also ’15, we’ve been allocating funds towards this particular programming, mini iPads for new parents, and this is very important for the parents so it can provide increased access to early childhood development programming. Not only that, some of the parents also share with us and told us that they need help in understanding and tracking their children’s developmental milestones, providing humanization, nutrition information, recalling safety alerts. These are some of the areas that have been shared with us, and also the language apps...

Yes, 2010 we’ve developed a residential school curriculum that we wanted to focus on those residential school survivors to hear their stories, and we have reached out to them. We’ll carry on their stories for generations to come. That’s part of the Grade 10 curriculum within the high school. It’s mandatory. They need to have the Grade 10 residential curriculum before they graduate. That’s just one piece that we’ve developed as part of our programming to deal with residential schools, and there will be plenty of others that I will be addressing with the leadership at the…(inaudible)…of...

The information that we’ve compiled, obviously with consent from the clientele as well as the survivors and even the families of the survivors, obviously we have work if we can release those names. But surely, I’ll be working very closely with the Member if we could allow that to happen and then provide that information to the Member.