Statements in Debates
There has been a lot of debate going back and forth between myself and the school board chairs and the school boards across the Northwest Territories. We’ve met just as recently as last month and I did listen to the school board chairs. We are going to have over 600 individual students registered over the two-year timespan. The fact is that 23 communities are ready to take on the role of JK. At the same time, I’ve been making some amendments to our initial stand where I provided optional junior kindergarten. At the beginning it was mandatory and everybody had to do it, but after listening...
Mr. Speaker, as has been indicated in this House, the PTR funding has been re-profiled across the Northwest Territories on a three-year phased approach. If an individual community is delivering the programming to the community and there’s a surplus of students that accidentally show up, those students would be identified through extraordinary funding through my department, my shop. We would provide that to the school board and it would be up to school board, at their discretion, if they’re going to hire an additional teacher or not, based on the funding we provide to them, based on the number...
The Member for Inuvik congratulated 36 graduates, and that’s just one area that we should be proud of and we’ll continue to push that forward. An investment in JK is an investment in the K to 12 overall school system. That’s what we’re doing. Out of the $150 million that we distribute to the school boards, we’re using that funding to educate those individuals so that they can graduate and continue on to post-secondary.
Our research shows us that investment in early childhood of a child’s life has the greatest impact on their lifelong learning and part of their journey as children and grown-ups...
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Let me start off by saying thank you to the Members for speaking up for JK. It is a very important subject of this Assembly. I am truly looking forward to the next business plans because I’m hearing that there will be an influx of funding for ECE. So I’m looking forward to that.
[English translation not provided.]
Mr. Speaker, in summarizing, as I stated in Tlicho, in a perfect world where resources are limited and there are no competing priorities, I would have asked for an additional $7.4 million to introduce a program as important as Junior Kindergarten and important to...
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. My department met with the school boards and called every school board to identify what their financial situation will be with each and every school board. Mahsi.
We are re-profiling; we aren’t cutting the budget. So the $7.4 million, as indicated, it is being rolled out to all the school boards to implement junior kindergarten. Those are the areas we have been working with the school boards and we will continue to make that a success. The junior kindergarten has been under discussion through the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, Early Childhood Development. This is where we’re at today. We’ve done a lot of research, and research is telling us this is the best way to go. The 16 to 1, at this point we are at 13.8 to 1. When we start implementing...
Again, the fact package does cover that detailed information. In 2014-15 for YCS, $277,000 will be deducted from YCS budget out of the $7.4 million that we’ve been talking about re-profiling through PTR. In 2015-16 another $467,000 is meant to be deducted from their budget. In 2016-17 another $393,000 estimated to be deducted. So it’s a total of $1.137 million. This reduction will be offset with an increase of $960,000 funding from ECE through formula funding to support implementation of JK, resulting in an overall reduction over three years of $177,000. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Since we’ve been dealing with NCS the last few years now on the reporting mechanism with the federal government, we’ve been talking about evaluating and reviewing of their proposals, as well, and the annual reports that are coming in. I completely agree, because we are a public government, and the way that the money is spent is essential to be a responsible government. This is an area that we’re primarily focusing on.
My department also recently discussed the 2014-15 contributions with NCS, which included an enhanced review of the outcome. This was done with NCS agreement, so they’ve also...
The CanNor funding has got its own sources and they deal directly with NCS, but I can speak to the areas of meeting with the federal Minister, the former Minister and the current Minister of Canadian Heritage, on a number of occasions to lobby the federal government for additional funds on Aboriginal language in general. This work, obviously, is ongoing work that we’re doing between the two parties. This year we’ve entered into negotiations, as well, with the federal government on the Canada-NWT Languages Agreement. We are on the verge of negotiations with the federal government and it will be...
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. First and foremost, I’d like to recognize all the Pages that are here today working for us, and it has been a long session as well. I’d like to thank them for their services. More specifically, for two Pages from Wekweeti, they are Autumn Football and Laylu Judas who are with us today. I’d like to say mahsi for your services.
I’d also like to recognize my former constituents, but they’re still from Behchoko in my view. That’s Debbie Lemouelle and also Stephanie Lafferty who are here with us. Welcome.