Kevin A. Menicoche

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. What I heard from the Minister was that the authority is there with the divisional boards to allow that kind of structure to exist, which is to have a day set aside to concentrate on education of aboriginal languages. Maybe if the Minister could confirm that for me.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I think the next question for the Minister from me would be that I’m just trying to determine whether the priority is identified in this special report. I was wondering if there was a move or trend towards having more aboriginal language and culture used in the school. Some of my constituents were talking to me. They’re saying, Kevin, the way it looks to me is that the government has a priority in languages and culture, yet we’re actually only spending five to 10 percent of our time in these endeavours. So what’s the real priority? I’d just like to ask the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is line items on education and culture. I’d just like to speak on them, but perhaps if I can ask the Minister what the latest initiatives in terms of supporting the acquisition and maintenance of aboriginal languages and culture just in terms of whether there are any recent studies being done to support these important initiatives in this department.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m just trying to get assurances from the Minister that the training will help develop our northern youth and our northern communities, especially to just prepare ourselves for the planned impacts. I believe the Minister made reference to ASEP, the aboriginal skills employment partnerships program. I would just like to ask the Minister that.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, just with respect to Aurora College and possible increased vocational training opportunities to our youth, especially with all the plans of industry and growth that we’d like to plan for in the future. I’m just wondering if there’s appetite within the department to look at alternative training facilities, particularly creating some of those facilities in the Nahendeh riding.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just for clarification from the Minister, is it necessary that some of the arrangements were so that the term loans become flexible of waiving interest and deferring principal payments? When it's noticed that the business is in trouble, do they try to then look at these different alternatives for the BCC, as opposed to these letters from the lawyers to call in their loans? Thank you.

Mahsi Cho, Mr. Speaker. Today, I would like to speak about debt-free payment and the Business Credit Corporation. I think we all recognize the importance of small business to our economic growth. I think we would all agree that this government should take every opportunity to support our northern entrepreneurs; to advocate for the small businesses.

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I have a situation in one of my communities that I represent where several small businesses have borrowed money and, through no fault of their own, their business ventures have failed. They did have loans with the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will reserve my comments for later. Thank you.

---Laughter

Thank you very much. I can appreciate also some of the local resource problems with regard to aboriginal languages and culture. Some of the things that lead me to think that it can be improved more efficiently is if we use the languages and culture more and it’s more supported by our government and as a result by our education department. For instance, it was brought to my attention the Jewish people in Ontario are all really strongly knowledgeable in their languages and in their culture. I was wondering how an almost dead culture continues to be fluent in their language and their culture. It...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’m just trying to ascertain from the Minister whether the priorities that we establish here as the Government of the Northwest Territories, does that become the priorities of the regional divisional education boards?