Jane Groenewegen

Clause 168 as amended.

---Clause 168 as amended approved

I think anything that offers more options to our secondary high school students in the Northwest Territories to make sure they get the best high school education they can, should be looked and should be considered. I would like to ask the Minister, do the education councils at this time have any funding in their budget for one-offs. If a parent came and said, you know what, I would like my child to go from Tuktoyaktuk to attend school in Inuvik, is there funding in budgets right now on an application or one-off basis where parents can have their student or their child attend a regional high...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement today on regional high schools, before I get into my questions, let me just make a clarification. I made a brief reference to my own children coming from Hay River to Yellowknife. I am not advocating for any student from Hay River coming to Yellowknife. It was just an unusual circumstance where they had a parent at both sides of the lake and they took advantage of an option. I was speaking to the relativity. When you’re from Hay River, Yellowknife’s big. When you’re from Fort Res, Hay River’s big. When you’re from Toronto, Taipei is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today in my Member’s statement I’d like to talk about the idea of regional high schools.

Historically, we know that students from Lutselk’e, a small community, went to Fort Smith; students from Res went to Hay River; and many students from across the North went to Akaitcho Hall. I was not directly involved in any of these, but at the time it seemed like not a bad idea. However, as government changes and as ideas change, the idea of grade extensions in the small communities became the best practise, the wisdom of the day, and that was what was undertaken.

I think it is...

Agreed. Thank you. We will commence with that agenda after a brief break.

---SHORT RECESS

Good afternoon, committee. I would like to call Committee of the Whole to order. We have a number of items before us on the agenda this afternoon. What is the wish of the committee today? Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues.

“Jacob Ryan was born on October 2, 2008, at 3:45 a.m. The doctors said he was perfect but would never take his first breath. I was only 22 weeks into the pregnancy. His lungs were too underdeveloped, so it was a stillbirth. The hardest thing that I ever had to go through was to pass this little body to the nurse, knowing we would not leave the hospital with our son.”

I read this account that was written by a constituent and which precipitated the bringing forward of this motion today.

“I did my best to make it appear to others that everything was...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Hay River has a wonderful high school, which is not utilized to its maximum capacity, with very experienced teachers and a very wide variety of course options, so I would like to ask the Minister if he could report back to us what a survey of parents might indicate who, in the South Slave, in small communities, might be interested in accessing an education in Hay River.

In my Member’s statement I was very clear to suggest that this would not be feasible, doable or even desirable if there were not home boarding or residential options available to these students that were sober, supervised, supported and in every way healthy for the children.

The Minister says that parents don’t want their high school students to go to regional centres for the reasons that the Minister stated, and he said that he will speak to the superintendents of education. Could we not perhaps find a way to ask the parents how they feel about that? Because I have run across many parents who...

By the time young people reach the age of high school, maybe it is an opportunity and it is time for them to spread their wings and experience some new things and perhaps living in a new community as long as – and I have to really stress this – there is safe, supervised and supported living accommodations for them in those regional centres.

So I for one would be in favour of having this dialogue on revisiting the idea of regional high schools. Thank you.