Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. In our region we’re finding it very difficult to attract apprentices, people who want to get into the trades, because of the quality of the education they are receiving in high school. It makes it difficult for them to enter into a trades entrance program or to get into the Apprenticeship Program because of the lack of skill or training.

I want to ask the Minister, is his department doing anything to improve the quality of education for Grade 12s that want to enter a trades program or a Trades Access...

Thank you. The Minister has indicated that they’re developing and they’re going to be looking at ways they can implement these programs. I would like to ask the Minister for some time frames, knowing the limited time we have left in the 17th. So I’ll ask that question. The employers need people to get valid drivers’ licences. It’s something that’s been repeated in the needs assessment.

Will the department consider working with the Department of Transportation to assist people in the remote communities to go get drivers’ licences and other qualified drivers’ training programs?

[Microphone turned off) …and I understand the needs assessment is completed.

I want to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, what are the priorities and what plans are there to implement the priorities within the Sahtu needs assessment that he found over the past year? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Sahtu got world-wide attention when major oil companies won exploration record bids for the vast hectares of land surrounding Norman Wells, Tulita and, recently, Fort Good Hope. To the Sahtu people, this area is our home and our land, but to most of the world it’s a remote frontier region yet to be developed, waiting to be tapped.

Between 2012 and 2014, the Government of the Northwest Territories conducted a needs assessment to determine the employment needs and job opportunities related to oil and gas exploration and looked at its impact on government, business...

No, thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. It’s clear to me and certainly I’m going to lend my support to this supplementary. We know that the challenges have to be given special consideration and some of the issues that we have to work with in our small communities. I have no more issues on this one.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to ask the Minister, with regards to Junior Kindergarten and the work that needs to be done in some of the educational facilities in the communities. Just hearing from Ms. Bisaro and the response back from the Minister and the Education Minister, are these works and are these some of the special situations we run into when we want to implement infrastructure to support programs and services, something not present but we have done to help the community to implement a program and sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes according to text and I believe there is some grey...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Recently in the Sahtu a couple of students couldn’t make it into the Trades Entrance Program because they couldn’t qualify. These are recent Grade 12 graduates, students that we graduated last year. We give them a huge celebration, the communities celebrated along with them, but when they came to write the Trades Entrance Program they didn’t pass. The Trades Entrance Program is 70 percent. These are students who were failed today.

I want to ask the Minister, why are we failing these graduates who want to get into a Trades Entrance Program, a career, to aspire to the...

Thank you. The overall picture the Minister has painted, looking at the overall system, re-evaluating in the last 10, 11 years as an MLA, we know in the Sahtu and the North that our education system is not comparable to the larger centres. It’s a known fact. As Mr. Premier said yesterday, it’s a cold hard fact. The cold hard fact of this issue is that we are not in the same ranking as the larger centres.

So, knowing this for the last 11 years, is the Minister willing to direct his department today to start looking at Grade 12, looking at and asking the communities, these are the programs that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have an urgent and emergent need for drivers’ licences in the Sahtu. It is one of those issues right now facing us, but I will do that another time.

I want to ask the department what they are doing to make aware the career opportunities in the resource sector.

What type of career counselling is happening at the college, happening at the schools, happening in the communities? What is the department doing?