Debates of February 24, 2005 (day 43)

No more general comments? Okay. Detail. I will ask the Minister if he would like to bring witnesses into the Chamber. Mr. Dent.

Yes, please.

Thank you. Does the committee agree?

Agreed.

Then I will ask the Sergeant-at-Arms if he would please escort Mr. Dent’s witnesses into the witness table.

Could you please introduce your witnesses, for the record? Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. On my right is the deputy minister of the department, Mr. Mark Cleveland; on my left is Mr. Paul Devitt, director of management services.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Would Members please turn to page 9-13? Activity summary, directorate and administration, operations expenditure summary, $6.475 million.

Agreed.

Thank you. Pages 9-14 and 9-15, information item, directorate and administration, active positions.

Agreed.

Thank you. Page 9-17, activity summary, education and culture, operations expenditure summary, $136.110 million.

Agreed.

I have never read such a big number. Agreed?

Agreed.

Agreed. Thank you. Page 9-19, education and culture, grants and contributions, grants, total grants, $52,000.

Agreed.

Pages 9-20 and 9-21, grants and contributions continued, total contributions, $121.112 million, total grants and contributions, $121.164 million.

Agreed.

Agreed. Thank you. Pages 9-22 and 9-23, information item, education and culture, active positions.

Agreed.

Page 9-25, advanced education and careers, activity summary, operations expenditure summary, $41.053 million. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I may be one page out here. Under advanced education and careers, Madam Chair, I wanted to ask a couple things about apprenticeship and employment training. Are we on the page yet, Madam Chair, that covers apprenticeship and employment training under advanced education and careers?

Mr. Braden, you’re on the right page.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This particular area, and it’s posted here for $4.666 million if I have it right, Madam Chair, is a fund that’s available for employers to tap to help bring their workers into trades and other skills. There is a reduction here of about $200,000. Not a significant reduction, Madam Chair, but I was wondering if the Minister could advise are there any areas here where employers are potentially seeing any reduction in this service. This program, which I would like to add is something that I’m proud of; I think Members are. I think it’s doing us very well to have this kind of a program here. Are we cutting back in any particular area? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The reductions and elimination of wage subsidies to diamond manufacturing employees of $84,000 is included in there, and there’s a reallocation of salary funding. It’s an internal reallocation of $94,000 being transferred from apprenticeship to fund an existing career development officer position, because we have been able to fund one of the apprenticeship positions under the Labour Market Development Agreement. So there’s no change in the numbers of people doing the jobs, we’ve just been able to move some of our funding into a different area.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The support in the diamond industry; was this a scheduled sunset, if you will, or a withdrawal of access to that program, or is this something that may come as a surprise to employers in the secondary industry? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It was a scheduled or expected reduction. It’s a residual that’s been left over from the training program we initiated some years ago. It’s not part of the overall budget reduction exercise.

Thank you, Dr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Finally, Madam Chair, in that particular area I’m wondering if the department could produce, not necessarily right now, but will there be an evaluation done or has there been an evaluation done of the impact that’s had on the diamond cutting and polishing industry? Was it money well spent? What kind of results have we got to show for that? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We know that it was essential to help get the industry up and going in the first instance. I’m not sure that it would be valuable now to follow up with a study as to how important it was. We don’t believe that the businesses would have gotten started here without this kind of subsidy. We know that from negotiations we had with the first people who came into the field. The fact that we do have factories that are up and polishing, now indicates, I would argue, that the program has been successful. The continued uptake of graduates from our training course also indicates that there is a market for people in this field in the Northwest Territories now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Chair. To be sure, I was told recently that if you put together all the employees that are at work on diamond row in the sorting shops and the cutting and polishing shops, we probably have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 300 people in Yellowknife, including the families and everyone else who has indirect employment. So there’s no doubt, in my mind, that we have the foundation for a successful and a sustained industry.

One of the expectations I think that we all had when these shops were getting set up, was that we would be able to attract and grow a northern workforce that northerners would be well suited to this job, given that they had the right training and the opportunity to go for it. So of the people who have gone through the training courses and are now employed in those shops, does the Minister have any idea how many of them are indeed northerners, and are the expectations that I might have had that we truly will have a resident workforce, are they viable? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As Members will likely remember, the Diamond Polishing Program at Aurora College did receive an award for being a world-class program and, yes, we are producing people who can move into the polishing factories and take jobs quite well. We’re aware that approximately 65 graduates of the program have been employed in Yellowknife in the secondary industry. We don’t track how many people were hired and basically did the apprenticeship type of training before the college started to get into the training. The first two years of training offered by the college didn’t include the polishing part. It was mostly diamond grading and sorting. So we don’t know how many people that didn’t go through the college system might also be northerners, but we do know the success rate of people going through the college system finding jobs has been fairly good. Better than 65 to 75 percent on each graduating class are moving directly into employment fairly quickly. So we think that, by and large, northerners are finding jobs there. They are not the only ones working in the field, but it is an opportunity for northerners to work.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Braden. Okay, thank you. Next I have Mr. Zoe.

Henry Zoe

North Slave

Thank you, Madam Chair. Under the section advanced education and careers, I believe there are grants and contributions for literacy. As Members would note, I made a Member’s statement relating to literacy funding. I note, Madam Chair, under the details, that literacy funding has gone down substantially for this current year. I’m wondering why the department has cut the literacy funding to the tune of before $400,000 versus what we currently. For me, Madam Chair, I think it’s very essential and from my understanding from the Literacy Council that oversees literacy in the Territories, they are doing a lot of good work, they’ve done a number of campaigns and they’ve been very successful and this type of funding shouldn’t have decreased. Why has the department decreased the funding for literacy? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Zoe. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The $300,000 reduction is to the Workplace Literacy Program. It does not affect the funding that would flow to the Literacy Council or community literacy programs. As Members know, we were tasked to find reductions throughout government and one of the areas we looked for was where the funding wasn’t being used on a consistent basis, and what we found was in that program $300,000 was being lapsed consistently because businesses weren’t coming to us with applications to use it. So we don’t think that this will lead to a large impact, because it’s money that wasn’t being accessed by business. It was a program we had made available for business to access through application, but we weren’t seeing the applications to use it all up. So this does not represent a decrease in funding to the Literacy Council.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Zoe.

Henry Zoe

North Slave

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to thank the Minister for his answer. In my Member’s statement, I encouraged the government to increase or maintain that current level, and although they are decreasing $300,000 from the business component where they were budgeting for literacy so business could apply for it, we would have been better off if we increased or enhanced the council’s funding in that respect. But I’m quite happy that the level of funding is not going to be decreased for the council initiatives for next year.

Madam Chair, another area I wanted to touch on was with regard to the funding that I think comes out of this section; I could be corrected. It is for the initiatives where we have joint partnerships with industry, federal government and ourselves pertaining to the mining initiatives. I’m not sure if it’s ASEP. Is that the one that is currently funded under this section, where we put in money with the federal government and with industry to do all the mine training where we trained 800 miners, I think it said, at one time. Is this the area that the money is coming out of? I couldn’t find the section that falls under that in this section, Madam Chair. Thank you.