R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank my colleague for his earlier statement, as well as the other colleague from the Deh Cho. I appreciate these conversations coming to light. We need to talk about them if we want to make changes.

The Member is right. Small communities have lower graduation rates. They have lower attendance rates. One of the priorities of this Assembly is to increase student education outcomes to the rest of Canada. In some regional centres and in Yellowknife, the student outcomes are nearly the same as the rest of Canada, so it really is the small communities, in a lot of...

There are two parts to the question: will the Minster commit to delivering on the ERI, and will the departmental staff go into all the small communities? The original ERI framework had a lot of big goals in there. I actually respect that document quite a bit because it says, "This is what we are going to try. We might not try them all. We are going to try them, and we will see if they work." They threw ideas out there.

It is a great document, and a lot of good things have come out of that. We have northern distance learning. There are elders in school. There are all sorts of these things that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The transformation of Aurora College into a polytechnic university is a priority of this Legislative Assembly, and I am pleased to say that we continue to make progress. To be successful, we must focus investments in programs and services that lead to better education and employment outcomes for our residents, including through our post-secondary education system.

Mr. Speaker, success requires the right changes, in the right order, at the right time. Following from the government response to the Aurora College foundational review, one of those changes has been the recent...

Thank you. I look forward to seeing if that happens, but it's a little strange, I guess, that, after one Assembly, we give this increase. Usually, you know, if we're budgeting, you might have to have a few years' overages before you work that into the base, so I look forward to seeing the work that this committee does in this Assembly. Thank you.

No, I am brand new in the job, and I plan on reviewing all the budgets that ECE has, to make sure that we are doing things properly.

ECE and YK1 have also been in talks about maintenance plans. The Department has offered to assist YK1. You know, we have the Department of Infrastructure here that specializes in this kind of stuff, and so the GNWT is offering assistance to help develop a maintenance plan so that some of these maintenance costs can be dealt with in a more timely fashion perhaps, or at least there could be a plan in place to avoid some of these emergency expenditures like the...

The surplus at YK1, according to the 2018-2019 financial statements, the total operating surplus, is 1.7 million, and that includes $900,000 in the capital fund reserve.

I am going to try to make it to as many schools as I can. I believe we have 49. I'm going to see what I can do this Assembly. Fort Resolution is right near Hay River, so that will be an easy one. My new deputy minister, who I am lucky to have, is a former principal. One of the first things she did is told me about what a big impression it makes on students when the Minister comes to their school and engages them, and it got me excited about it. I look forward to it. I look forward to getting to some of the places where I don't normally get to go, places like Lutselk'e. I can't make any...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document pursuant to Section 21 of the Financial Administration Act entitled " Annual Reports for Northwest Territories Education Bodies for the 2018-2019 School Year Ending June 30, 2019." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think we all know, in 2016, the intake for the social work diploma program as well as the teacher education program was suspended, and those programs are currently undergoing program reviews. These aren't just regular program reviews like the college would normally do. These are academic program reviews that are part of a new framework that are up to national standards. They are, let's see, the Ministerial Statement on Quality Assurance of Degree Education in Canada, released by the Council of Ministers of Education, is what we are conforming to. The college, as it was, has been around for...

I believe we hired around 300 summer students in the GNWT, but I am not sure how many are in their actual field of study. I think the Department of Justice hired all the law students from the Northwest Territories last year, actually, though. You know, we are making some progress, and I look forward to making more, but, you know, these are all good points, and I will continue to advance this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.