Julie Green

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm quite frustrated with the responses from the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment about the social work program. Mr. Speaker, it was a political decision to cut that program based on the government's decision that we needed to have extensive budget cuts in the first two years of our mandate. On that basis, Aurora College was told to cut programs. They cut the social work program. Now, the Minister is not making a political decision to reinstate it. She's hiding behind the bureaucracy and saying that it's up to them to restore it. So my question...

What I am trying to have the Minister answer is: who will be left in the social work program at this time next year? What resources will be allocated to it?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I have called the Minister's attention to the Aurora College foundational review recommendation for the creation of a degree-granting polytechnic, and I am aware that she is now working on that. With the social work program report, the Minister has a thorough road map in hand for creating a degree-granting program at the new polytechnic. Will the Minister use this report to make a start on our course offerings in the new institution? Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In addition to Ms. Rogers being a constituent of Inuvik Boot Lake, she is also the director of the Inuvik shelter, and she is here for the Family Violence Shelter Network meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to table a document with the title "Review of the Social Work Diploma Program Final Report, April 5, 2018."

I just want to make sure that we're doing an apples-to-apples comparison. So on the Stats NWT website, there is a list of NWT community surveys that have taken place back to 2000, and what happens is the NWT Bureau of Statistics staff collects the information about housing conditions and produces this report every five years. Is this report going to be completed in 2019?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Minister for her response. Of course, it's not what I want to hear because it lacks the specificity of telling students who are interested in social work and instructors who are teaching social work that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Ever since this upheaval was created by the previous Minister by implementing cuts at Aurora College, the goal posts just keep moving and moving. We have to wait for the review; we have to wait for the management response; now, we're waiting for an expert. So I really encourage the Minister to expedite...

I wonder what the Minister thinks will be left of that social work program by the time she hires her expert and the expert comes up with a plan and an evaluation that has already done is redone. What will be left of the program that is there today?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I regret that the Minister has had a full glass of mumbo-jumbo for lunch and we are not getting anywhere with trying to understand how to preserve the strengths of this program within the time that is still allotted to it. It's not too late to have the remaining staff start working on how the implementation of the reports' recommendations could happen, and so what is standing in the way of this? It cannot be the hiring of this associate deputy minister. He is working at too high a level to start worrying about which elective social work students are going...

Thank you to the Minister for that response. Mr. Speaker, it's my understanding that there is already a loss of one of the three instructors and that the college is now down to just a handful of students who are finishing up their program. What is the Minister's intention for this program in the meantime, before the review is implemented?