Julie Green

I appreciate the Minister's good intentions, but he is scolding these students like they are bad children. What we have here are, in the most cases, mature students coming from other communities who have lots of commitments in their lives as care for their children and their parents and so on. It is not a matter of them not sticking to it. It is a matter of them being able to engage in this work at their own pace.

What I would like to think is that the Minister isn't looking at an all-or-nothing solution, but he might look at more flexibility, as he wants in the grade school system, to ensure...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also have a question about this Aurora College functional review. We know that the Teacher Education Program and the social work program have been put in abeyance pending the strategic planning exercise that was going on. So will these programs now be in the functional review, or is their fate going to be captured by this strategic plan? Thank you.

Thank you to the Minister. How will the department measure success for students and teachers of this pilot project?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have struggled mightily to get some answers on instructional hours in this sitting, including oral questions and written questions, and I am now down to four that I need answers to, so I am going to try these with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. My first question is: why are reduced instructional hours being piloted all across the NWT in every school? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with just one week left in this sitting, I want to look ahead to some important work Regular MLAs will be doing during the break. The Standing Committee on Social Development will be reviewing Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Education Act. Specifically, the members of this committee, including myself, will be looking at the proposed changes to instructional hours.

It has taken close questioning by my colleagues on this side, both in the House and at a public briefing, to understand the rationale for these changes and, specifically, to allay parents’ and students’...

Mr. Chair, we have a problem, in that we don’t have a hard copy of the bill. The binders are no longer present. Could we be advised of where to find the copy of the bill?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am tabling three documents today. The first is the letter from the Association of Social Workers in Northern Canada to all Members of this House concerning the decision to phase out the social work program at Aurora College; the second is a letter from the Canadian Association of Social Workers to the federal Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour on the same issue; and the third is a news release from the Canadian Association of Social Workers expressing its concern on this topic. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My concern is that putting programs into abeyance is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy for their extinction, meaning that, if instructors and students know that the program has a finite life, they won't continue on with it. They will move on to something else. Can the Minister assure us that this one year abeyance will in fact only be one year?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my final question is: is the department prepared to reverse this reduction in instructional hours if the pilot isn't successful, using those student and teacher outcomes? Thank you.

Thank you to the Minister. The Minister and the Housing Corporation have been very diligent about not allowing for an increase in the number of units within the Housing Corporation stock because of the increased operations and maintenance costs that come with extra units, so will the Minister accept extra units if that is what the IRC decides to do with its money?