Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Minister of Education for his Minister’s statement today. It is good to see the creative and innovative approach that our government department of Education is taking in the education of the children of the Northwest Territories. As I said in my statement, we cannot expect that every method of education will work in every circumstance in every child’s life in every community in every home. I think back to my days in school and I don’t think my parents ever asked me once if I’d done my homework, yet I think sometimes we expect that support is there in the home.
I’d like to ask the Minister if he or his department has ever contemplated the semester systems in the schools and if something perhaps shorter than one whole half of a year. Sometimes students become discouraged because they may have some disappointing grades in some tests and things and that actually wipes out an entire half a year. Has consideration ever been given to smaller modules where you could have small victories, small successes and something that wouldn’t affect the entire academic year of the child?
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad the Member raised a good point there. That is one of the areas that are part of the discussions that we’re having with the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. Ongoing plans are to have a package ready by this summer. We haven’t really talked specifically about the semester itself, and the Member alluding to maybe a particular program or courses could be in line with maybe a shorter version or difference factor. Those are the areas we need to explore. We are always open to ideas, as I stated in the House on previous occasions. I think this is an area that we definitely need to explore and see if it will benefit the schools in the Northwest Territories.
The education of a child I think we have to adopt the idea that it’s not all about the time spent in the classroom in that very, very formal setting. I’m glad to see the Minister has referred to mentoring. Again I only have my own experience to draw on, but harkening back to when I was a youngster in school, we had an opportunity to go out into the community and get involved in different things. I worked in the library, in the public library after school. I didn’t like reading the books but I just liked the books. It was a great opportunity to become involved in something in the community that was worthwhile.
I’d like to ask the Minister if he could expand a little bit on this mentoring program that he’s talking about where the children would have an opportunity to have exchange with people doing various things and perhaps some of the elders in the community.
We are looking at other alternatives to educating our students. The Member is correct that in some of the areas it could be based on their performance as opposed to their attendance. That’s an area we’re also looking at. We’re also dealing with the attendance issue on formula funding on enrolment. But there is a very successful project happening in the South Slave region. We went to visit Fort Simpson and Fort Resolution on their particular program, an alternative program. I must say this is an area we are very interested in as a department that we can probably pilot project in other regions. I will be coming back to the House to discuss this further on the successful program in the South Slave region.
I know that attendance is a very important issue of the teachers that are trying to make progress and inroads in the educating of a child. However, again drawing on my own experience, being raised in an area that was surrounded by agriculture and a farming community, when it was harvest time the kids who lived on farms missed school. I mean, they would have to help their family with the harvesting. If you translate that to the more traditional activities here in the North, if a child did miss school and it was to go with their family for time on the land or spring hunt, I hope that when they return, even though attendance is so important, that that time that they were able to spend doing something so important and so educational would still be celebrated by the school and that they would not be reprimanded or somehow discouraged by the lack of their attendance in that formal setting. I’d like to ask the Minister what is the government’s policy regarding attendance when it is to pursue activities such as that. Thank you.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, according to the Education Act there are so many days that students have to attend in a year. But at the same time, we continue working with educational councils and also the education authorities. On-the-Land Program is very important to us as a department and also to the communities. They’ve worked into part of their curriculum development where it could be classified as taking an On-the-Land Program. The Tlicho community is a prime example that we’ve used as a model in other jurisdictions. Other regions are taking on the initiative as well. Mr. Speaker, those are the areas that we continue to be innovative and creative on identifying whether it be enrolment or part of the attendance. It hasn’t been a huge factor to date, but we continue to make progress in that area. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Your final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment if teachers coming into the Northwest Territories who will be teaching in a cross-cultural setting, is there currently a formal training module, orientation to the culture of the North that is required to be taken by teachers who will be teaching in our communities? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we are currently developing a framework for the whole Northwest Territories, but each jurisdiction has their own orientation package. Again, I’ll refer back to the Tlicho Community Services Agency where they have the On-the-Land Barren Land Program where newly recruited teachers go out on the land with the elders. It has been a very successful program, but that’s one jurisdiction. We’re looking at the cross-cultural throughout the Northwest Territories as an orientation package. Mr. Speaker, we are developing one and we’ll certainly get back to the Members on that. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a response to my second set of written questions regarding contracts to former Ministers was tabled yesterday. Again, the Premier has disrespectfully refused to answer the precise questions asked, so I must again try to drag out answers. I asked the Premier to provide “copies of the documentary evidence supplied by the contractor to demonstrate that the contracted services were provided.” No documents were given.
The Financial Administration Manual requires that “sufficient documentation is retained to substantiate recorded transactions and is verifiable for audit.” The Premier said in the House yesterday, according to unedited Hansard, “everything that we do as a government will flow out of the Financial Administration Act.”
So, Mr. Speaker, if the Executive obeyed the law, the documents must exist. Will the Minister supply those documents, as I have repeatedly asked, or perhaps, if appropriate, admit they don’t exist; whatever the case may be? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Executive, Mr. Roland.
Mr. Speaker, the contracts that we have in place that we put together so that we can position ourselves when it comes to discussions with either the federal government or industry, at times, are necessary and in place, and we use that, different departments use those as well, and we do have documentation on those. In some areas the documentation is provided directly to and short form to appropriate Ministers. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, former Minister Todd was contracted for up to $48,000, at $1,500 a day, 32 days of work. The FAA requires “that amounts claimed are correct as to quantities and prices for goods or services provided.” So the law required the Executive to verify documentation of the exact services provided. So where’s the invoice that says how many days, even, Mr. Todd worked?
For what I demand is the last time: will the Premier prove the Executive obeyed the law and produce the documents that were verified to approve payment, or was this actually a one-time $48,000 schmooze fee? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’ll caution Members to not refer to Members that are not in the House. Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is now not a rookie anymore. He’s been around this Assembly long enough and he’s been digging up information for quite some time and making strong suggestions out there or language that we can get on and debate and challenge each other on. He’s not satisfied with the information we’ve given him. There was no schmooze fest, as the Member is suggesting. Contracts were in place; meetings did occur, and a number of them. He’s not satisfied with the information we’ve given him. I am sorry he’s not satisfied, but I don’t know if there’s anything I can do that will satisfy him short of having him sit beside me in meetings and take the notes for me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Yes, I appreciate the vote of confidence on the Premier that I’m coming along as an MLA, and I apologize for mentioning names here.
Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General’s report that was tabled yesterday in the House noted the need for some serious tune-up of our contracting services, unlike the Premier’s opinion of things, so these questions are not frivolous questions that I’m dreaming up or anything like that. I’ve asked very specific questions repeatedly. So let me offer my third one, specifically, and I will happily shut up, Mr. Speaker, if I get a response that stands up.
As this House knows, the Executive let two sole-source contracts to two contractors at the same time for exactly the same services and described each contractor as “uniquely” able to provide the services. My written question asked how this could be, and the question was ignored. Will the Premier, for the first time, explain now how it is possible for two identical services provided to be unique, and if the answer is that these two unique contractors were providing the same service, why was the contract not bid competitively to get the best price? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, in many forms of contracting, best price isn’t necessarily the best work that you want to get. Especially in the critical days of a government coming into power, it wants to ensure that the information it is collecting, the position it is preparing for in meetings, in opening some of those doors, each person can bring their own unique qualities to the table. For example, with our establishing a relationship with the federal government that’s in place, that requires a unique set of capacity and capabilities, and we received that.
When it comes to dealing with industry, as well as some of the bureaucracy in the system, again, the individuals sought for their experience and ability to open doors and set up meetings for us. So those were done, those were contracts that were entered into initially with our government, and we used those at the time when we felt that we needed them. Since then, we’ve established those networks, we’ve established our criteria and competence with Ministers across the country, whether it is federal, provincial or other territories, and now with that level of confidence and our positions well established, we’ve no need for those contracts. That, as well, shows that with our contracting in place that we did not extend those contracts. Thank you.
Of course, these are just examples. There are many contracts that we could be talking about here and perhaps will in the future. But I’m asking about process here, Mr. Speaker. So I’m asking the Premier what will he do, given the Auditor General’s report and some of the obvious irregularities that we’re raising here in the House, to tune-up this process in a way that gives us the confidence we need, and our public need, that things are being done appropriately and with appropriate documentation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I understand that response was tabled in this Assembly, our response to the Auditor General’s report, on the initiatives we would undertake to deal with those issues. As well, in remarking to other questions earlier this week, the Financial Administration Act is being reviewed and out of that can flow further changes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about tourism, my support of it, and certainly I recognize the hard work going on in the ITI shop to make sure that the Northwest Territories is certainly advocated in a very positive way to attract tourism. But one of the areas that I’d like to find out today and lay before this House is what is this government doing specifically to provide services for that type of tourism market. I referred to the RV sector, which is a very popular tourism group. Mr. Speaker, specific to investment in the Northwest Territories, what is the government doing to prepare for these RV tourists? Are they investing in infrastructure or services that can be seen? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Specifically to increasing the infrastructure to provide for RV parking, I’m pleased to announce to the Member that we are increasing the number of parking sites or camping sites that people with RVs can pull into. We’re also looking or studying the potential for expanding Fred Henne Park and we’re also looking at whether there are any possibilities out at Prelude Campsite. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, that’s certainly good news. In the riding of Yellowknife Centre there are a lot of small businesses and they certainly rely significantly on this infusion of tourist dollars and, as we all know, the Territory’s economy relies seriously on the infusion of new types of dollars. Could the Minister elaborate a little further to what he means by looking at extending the Fred Henne Territorial Park to accommodate RV tourism, that type of sector? Can he elaborate to basically explain size, what dollar investment and when we can expect something? Thank you.
When I say we’re looking and studying Fred Henne Park, we’re looking at the available land that we have. We’re also looking at how many campsites we can build in there. Once we get all of that information we’ll have to put together a business case so we can come to the Legislative Assembly as part of our business planning process to obtain additional resources so that we can expand our capacity for RV camping. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, as I said in my Member’s statement, Northern House, in my view, is a clear example of hard work and certainly an excellent demonstration of what the North has to offer.
Mr. Speaker, I’ve been highlighting my issue, trying to raise awareness about preparing for RV'ers, and certainly I know the staff working down there are clearly providing excellent examples of how people can get here and things to do. But if all that work is for naught, if we’re not prepared for them, I’d like to find out from the Minister what type of work is being done by Industry, Tourism and Investment to prepare for these types of tourism and hopefully a wave of tourism that may come this summer? Thank you.
We’ve been doing a lot of work and preparing for this invasion of tourists. In 2009-10 we’ve spent resources to upgrade our facilities. We’re planning to do additional work this summer. As well, I should point out that we will be examining opportunities with some of the land claim organizations or land claim, their government or businesses, to see if we can work in partnership with aboriginal governments to identify opportunities in the tourism sector. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I like the phrase of the Minister “preparing for the invasion of tourism,” but I would encourage the Minister not to count them until he sees the whites of their eyes crossing our border.
But, Mr. Speaker, how do we find out if this investment is working? That’s what I really want to make sure, is that all the investment done at the Northern House and all the work being done to attract tourism, how are linking it to any type of results to ensure that type of investment will be long-term dividends to our northern economy? One dollar spent anywhere in the North helps the whole North, so it’s about a big northern picture. Thank you.
There are a number of ways we can analyze how successful we’ve been at Northern House. One is to impute the value of all of the media coverage that we’ve been getting. We’ve been on major international networks, we are getting a lot of coverage from the tourism media and different newspapers and publications, so that’s one way of imputing value. If we had to pay for all that coverage, it would probably be in the millions of dollars, perhaps in the tens of millions of dollars.
Other ways will depend on how many people come to the Northwest Territories, and we capture that information through our tourism surveys and exit surveys, and I guess we’ll see on the ground. We’ve been getting very positive comments. A lot of people have indicated they’re coming to the Northwest Territories. So that would be how we would determine how successful we were with our campaign at the Olympics. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
QUESTIONS 372-16(4):
IMPROVEMENTS TO SAHTU
Mr. Chair, my question is to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to ask the Minister in terms of the education issue here. I want to ask the Minister what improvements to education have been made in the Sahtu communities because of the new investments approved through the budget process.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Through the new initiative, we’ve had several meetings on the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative and they’ve made some recommendations to our department and we’ve implemented those particular initiatives. Although it may be small, it’s a start. We provide funding to each of the school education councils, so they can deal with enrolment issues, enrolment challenges. Not only that, Mr. Speaker, we’ve provided a laptop to the grade 12 students and now we’re looking towards next year of providing possibly to grade 11 students and other initiatives along the way that will certainly provide benefits to the students, to the communities and also the community as a whole. So those are the areas that we’re looking at. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister, in his ministerial statement, talked about education and I also heard some Members talk about the Mentorship Program here. I want to ask the Minister, I’ve been working quite diligently with him over a couple of years to look at a mentorship program in the Sahtu in terms of involving our real teachers in our culture, the elders. How do you get the real teachers into an education system to work with us and the parents? When will the Minister put forth a directive saying elders now have to be involved in our education system?
Mr. Speaker, the amount of funding that we provide to education councils, it’s to their discretion on where to disclose the funds, whether it be to the elders or to the Mentorship Program. Some of the school districts are providing mentorship to improve student attendance using various examples. So it will be up to the Sahtu education council to provide that available information.
Mr. Speaker, although this is a small initiative that we’ve initiated, we are already making progress, we are seeing some changes in student attendance going up a bit. Mr. Speaker, on a going forward basis, this summer we’re going to have a package available from the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative and I’m looking forward to implementing that with the support of the Members. So I will be coming back to the Members on an update. Mahsi.
I look forward to the initiative that the Minister will bring forward to the Members on the Aboriginal Achievement Initiative. We know students have to do hard work. They have to be disciplined. They have to have the parents influence them to go to school. The Minister is right; if you’re not in school, valuable lessons will not be learned. In terms of monitoring support for students, is the Minister monitoring the types of supports that can be provided in the school and the types of supports needed to have successful graduates to come out with a quality diploma?
I think the Member touched on it; parental involvement and community involvement. It has to be monitored at the community level as well. The school can only do so much. The education council can only do so much as well. As a department, we can do what we can to make a very successful program. So there are all these partners actively involved, Mr. Speaker, but we do have ongoing... We are currently discussing what the Member is alluding to, such as a Mentorship Program where elders could be involved. So those are the initial discussions we are having to date and the outcome will be this summer. Mahsi.
There are many issues in the Sahtu regarding education. I just recently was notified that two students that did attend a Fort Smith course at Aurora College and one wanted to attend the NAIT program. Both dropped out and went back to the Sahtu and are now working. Mr. Speaker, these are two young men that weren’t able to pursue the post-secondary education. That’s a crying shame, Mr. Speaker, in terms of supporting our students. With regards to all these issues that can be raised in the Sahtu, the Minister will be getting an educational symposium proposal from the Sahtu to have education looked at seriously in our region here. Is he open to areas that education could be looked at differently in the Sahtu in the Northwest Territories, so we can have culture and spirituality tied strongly into our education system?
I do believe we are making some changes in our curriculum, as long as it benefits the communities, benefits the schools, benefits the students. If we do it for one, we have to do it for all jurisdictions, not just one region. So, Mr. Speaker, those are the areas that we continue to have with the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. There is valuable information and discussions taking place. Each of the regions are well represented and very fruitful discussions are happening. So, Mr. Speaker, all the issues addressed here today are being addressed at those particular committee meetings. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I talked about the mini-hydro project near Lutselk’e. There are many positive implications to the project; however, that means nothing unless we get started. So I have questions for the Minister of ITI. Mr. Speaker, Lutselk’e is eager to see some actual work started. Can the Minister tell me how the government is engaging the community on this project? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government has identified the falls in the Snowdrift River as an ideal place for a mini-hydro development and work started in 2007-08 and there was additional work done in 2008-09. We are also planning a large infusion this year. Hydro projects do take time and we have to collect about two years of baseline environmental data, we have to undertake the engineering work and also figure out the regulatory process that we have to go through. Once we get all of that information and develop the cost estimates and work plan, then we would have to develop a business deal with the community of Lutselk'e, and our expectation is that would have to be done within the next 12 months. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
