Norman Yakeleya

The one instance I made reference to and the Minister has just talked about, the Grande Prairie institution. Is the Minister now giving the House a deadline on when maybe a resolution could be satisfactory to the student or the community to have the student or future students come up to the North to do their practicum?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When it comes to a good education, there are many challenges youth and adults in small communities in the Northwest Territories have. An education, Mr. Speaker, we are told will provide opportunities to find good jobs for our students, a job suited to them and one that will give them satisfaction and a decent income. That’s why we support our young people to go to school.

An adult student in the Sahtu is facing the barrier challenges right now, Mr. Speaker. She has completed coursework at Grande Prairie College in Alberta to be a teacher assistant. In order to complete...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask the Minister in terms of community health programs, is the department looking at a comprehensive family program? We have a bunch of programs all over the place, and have they put together a unique northern, even an Aboriginal cultural family program, and yet in my seven years I haven’t really seen a family program come out of the communities in terms of treatment in terms of addiction, family violence or any type of abuse for the whole family. Is that something that we should be asking more forcefully in terms of putting family programs together? I want...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Can the Minister list all the post-secondary educational institutions that enable our northern students to do their practicum in the North?

Also, can the Minister provide a work plan and implementation schedule that would show how the Grande Prairie College and our Education department help our northern students begin their work experience placement in the North?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Would the Minister look at future planning to implement strong bush camps in the Northwest Territories rather than continuing pouring dollars into a concrete facility that just seems to recycle our people over and over again and nothing is changing? Would the Minister look at implementing some strong bush camps that would possibly help the justice system?

Some time ago I understood the number to be around $90,000 per inmate per year. I’m not too sure how much that has changed. The reason I ask this is I want to ask the Minister about the number of inmates at the North Slave Correctional Centre, the population there.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister if he could share what type of arrangements or what type of barriers that Grande Prairie has put up in terms of not helping the student to get to the North to do her practicum. What are some situations that his department is looking into?

When these students enter into post-secondary institutions and take on the career of a teacher or teacher’s assistant, has the department notified the students ahead of time about their practicum and the requirements we need? To also let them know ahead of time that it’s not possible to come back to the North to do their practicum, such as this student in Grande Prairie that was disappointed that these things couldn’t be worked out ahead of time? Can the Minister notify me if these things are told to students entering into the teaching professions?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment about the practicum issue I talked about. I want to ask the Minister if there are any ways he’s working to arrange for students in the Northwest Territories to come back to the Territories to do their practicum once they complete their courses in southern educational institutions.

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the review in the springtime and having some further discussions. I want to ask the Minister in terms of going forward in this area here, Mr. Chairman, it seems that we are spinning our feet here in terms of getting help for people in our communities. I recall an old lady in Colville Lake that talked about having a program on the land. It has been about seven years now since I have been in the Assembly. It is very difficult for this government to put a program on the land. We spend about $2 million a year in Nats’ejee K’eh and we see that every year we have a...