Statements in Debates
The Minister mentions an action plan. I know that that has been out there for quite some time. We have been waiting for that. It was originally scheduled for January and I know committee suggested that it be pushed back. Another question would be: When are we going to see that action plan?
The letter indicates that some of these initiatives will be funded from existing budgets but that others will require funding to be put in place. I need a little bit further elaboration from the Minister.
Will there be new funding for these initiatives, or will he continue with the current funding from within...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On behalf of the residents of Frame Lake, I too would like to thank Mr. Blake for his service. It has been great service and we appreciate that. I would also like to welcome the incoming commander, Mr. Smith. I have some Pages as well. Frame Lake is extremely well represented with Pages in the Assembly this week. Today I would like to welcome three Pages from Frame Lake: Sebastian Ransom, Isaac Macpherson and Dakota Earle. Thanks to those three in particular for your service, but thanks to all the Pages for the work they do for us. Thanks, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday I voiced the concern of Yellowknife residents who have expressed their views to their MLAs about the implementation of Junior Kindergarten. Today I want to delve deeper into the dollars and cents aspects of their concerns.
The Education Renewal and Innovation Project is an ambitious one. It’s looking at a renewal or restructuring of our whole NWT education system. To date, the Minister and the department have announced, or is it decreed, that Junior Kindergarten will start in September 2014 in 29, or 22 now of our 33 communities, but with no new money. A very...
Thanks to the Minister. My last question is a general question with regard to this particular process, and I think we all know that developing a bill requires a great deal of time and effort on the part of both Regular Members, the Minister’s office and staff. It’s quite a process to put legislation in place and to go through the whole process of providing it to committee, committee does the review, it then comes here. There is a great deal of time and effort involved on many people’s parts, and it seems to me that there might be a better way to do this without having to make a change to...
Thank you, Madam Chair. That’s great. Can I get a sense of whether or not…and this is not so much relative to the students coming back but… Well, I guess it is, because if more students are coming back then we are remissing more money.
I’m looking for a trend. Can you give me any indication of over, say, the last five or 10 years whether or not this number has been going up or whether it has stayed steady or if it has gone down? Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We would like to deal with Bill 24 today.
I totally agree. This policy has been revised for a very long period of time, so I’m glad that we are moving forward on the whole policy but specifically on this one section.
I’m still a bit confused when the Minister references a Cabinet policy. I’m not sure if that is a policy that stays just within Cabinet. When policies are developed, they are generally made public. So when he talks about a Cabinet policy, is this a policy that will be public afterwards and he is simply calling it a Cabinet policy because it’s not approved? I’m a little confused there. Thanks.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to take this opportunity to try and get some clarification from the Minister of Health and Social Services with regards to some answers he gave to MLA Blake two days ago in regards to the Medical Travel Policy and escorts. In his answer to Mr. Blake, the Minister stated that there was going to be an RFP put out to deal with an escort policy. I believe that’s what I heard. Hansard doesn’t really clarify it for me. From Hansard, the Minister stated, “I’m hoping to have that Cabinet policy to Cabinet and then to Standing Committee on Social Programs in July.”...
I’m very glad to hear that new funding may be on the horizon, but if these initiatives are being implemented in the ‘14-15 school year, the budget for that school year is already over and done, and I am not convinced that we are going to get new money.
I spoke a bit about contingencies for school boards in my statement. Yesterday the Minister, when he was talking about contingencies, stated that, “those monies should be expended into educational programming, so we support that as well.” I am very pleased to hear that the Minister supports spending contingency money on educational programming...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up from my statement and ask some questions of the Education, Culture and Employment Minister about the Education Renewal and Innovation Project and how it’s going to be funded.
I recently received a letter from the Minister responding to questions that I raised in March of this year about the Education Renewal and Innovation Project. In that letter it indicates 10 initiatives from the ERI plan, well, actually 11 if you consider Junior Kindergarten, but the 10 initiatives are set to start in the 2014-15 school year. However, in the letter there was...