Shane Thompson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do have three documents I'd like to table. The first one is a letter from Ms. Catholique-Valpy in regard to her daughters' names spelled in traditional for identification. The second one is "Transactions of the Canadian Institute, Volume IV, 1892-93" and "The South Nahanni River Region, NWT (1820-1972): Patterns of Socio-Economic Transition in the Canadian North." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I understand it is not an on-site position, but you want to have support. It is just not all about funding. It is supporting the daycares to do the job properly for our youth. So, again, I have a concern that it is only a half-time position, but I am going to move on to another topic. In regard to the $13-million surplus for the district education authority, does the Minister have a breakdown that she can share with us? She doesn't have to share it today. Is she able to share with committee to show the breakdown in these areas? Thank you.

The Minister talked about distance learning and the program that the department is using, and it is a great program. However, it is very much a peer setting. It is the top level, to get people into college or to university. Can the Minister advise: is the department looking at adding additional courses to the distance learning opportunity?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Minister's passion and drive, and I am hoping that she is right, but we hear about government costs and that. Now we are going to add a second board? Is this not going to cost more money to the system, or are we able to do that with the $32 million that we have right now? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the Minister for coming into that world because that is where I was coming. I know those four communities. You need actual support to get these. Four of my communities that I represent don't have licensed daycares. With a half-time position, how can that individual support the ones that actually have daycares and the ones that are trying to get them in there? It is kind of: well, we want to get 11 more licensed daycares going, but we are not going to give you the supports to it. How can we actually achieve that if we only get a half-time position? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I was asking the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment about upgrading, and stuff like that. I need to follow up with a couple more questions for the Minister. We have set up a meeting to go into the communities. Can the Minister make a commitment to be prepared and to have her staff prepared to discuss upgrading and the challenges they are facing? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We went to them and told them to make cuts, so we, as government and the Department of Education, told them to make a cut. They've proposed these two things to cut. Now, you're telling me that the money is still there. We've seen the college. They did a review of the social work program, and they said, this is what we need to do to fix it. So why didn't we just say, "Okay, fix it and still implement it?"

It's funny because we're sitting here saying they're autonomous. They're not really autonomous, because we've got to give them two years now. We've told them that we have...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On page 44, I see that there is only a part-time position for early childhood and school services. Can the Minister explain why it is only a part-time position for eight communities? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's great to talk about learning centres, but if we don't have them in the small communities, it doesn't really help. Could the Minister advise: in the future, will learning centres be expanded into these small communities and all communities in the Northwest Territories?

Thank you. I'd just like to follow up on some questions from Ms. Green here that she proposed to the Minister. The Minister talks about the college being autonomous. Can you give me the definition of what "autonomous" means? Thank you, Mr. Chair.