Debates of February 24, 2005 (day 43)

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The School Planning and Resource Committee, or SPARC, meets annually, at least, to review the formula and propose changes or modifications to the formula. So it is regularly reviewed. I can’t tell you when the formula was first put in place, but the membership on SPARC includes representatives from the divisional education councils. So the superintendents typically are involved in discussing the formula. Everybody knows we have a certain amount of dollars and the discussion is then how to best allocate it. That’s the committee where the decisions are recommended from.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, just on the Apprenticeship Program. I have a constituent for whom I must ask a question. Mr. Chairman, the Apprenticeship Program is a lot of different trades in the Northwest Territories. Not all of the training for those trades is available here in the Northwest Territories, so obviously some of the theory training is acquired outside; probably in Alberta mostly, I would assume. Mr. Chairman, when the training that is required for certain trades is available in the Northwest Territories, could the Minister confirm that the apprentice has no option other than to attend the designated northern training institution? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, we insist that if we offer the training in the Northwest Territories, that’s where we will pay for the apprentice to go to take the training.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, then I would ask the Minister if that is consistent with any other type of post-secondary education here in the North. I think of programs like the Nursing Program, the Social Work Program, programs that offer the students the ability to take their training and graduate here in the Northwest Territories. That is a type of post-secondary training. Could you want to be a nurse and decide, at your own discretion, to take your training someplace outside of the Northwest Territories, even though it’s available here? Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s not totally consistent with our other approaches, but we would likely wind up in the same situation as we did with social workers. If we didn’t insist on it, we would have to probably stop offering it anywhere in the Northwest Territories. We’ve been challenged to try and provide as much training as possible in the Northwest Territories. We have very few students who take this; that’s why we can’t offer all the school courses for apprentices in the Northwest Territories. We have chosen a few and we have chosen to try and make sure we offer those ones in the Northwest Territories. But in order to gain the economies of scale, we have to insist that everybody who’s a registered apprentice and wants the schooling in that course has to take it in the Territories. Otherwise, we couldn’t be offering it in the Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If an apprentice is registered in the Northwest Territories, but chooses at their own expense to register in a program in the South, is it recognized in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, that would be normally the case. The apprentice would have to work with the apprenticeship officer and make sure the training was booked through our offices but, yes, that’s possible and the training would be recognized, yes.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One other question then is if the apprentice is employed by someone who is accessing the subsidy program for apprentices and is a registered apprentice in the Northwest Territories, then schooling in a southern institution would not be a problem provided that the department did not incur any of the cost for that training. Correct? Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I said, as long as the apprentice works with either an apprenticeship officer or CDO to make sure that the training is recognized and approved by us. If you’re going to NAIT or SAIT or some other recognized institution, then there should not be a problem. It should be no problem at all.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just for clarification then, the program available to employers would not be impacted either by the apprentice taking their program in the South, as long as it was accredited. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Dent.

Mr. Chairman, I don’t believe they’re linked. I think the employer applies for a training-on-the-job subsidy. That’s not linked at all to the apprentice who goes by himself to book the schooling with their apprenticeship officer. We can follow up to make sure of that, but my understanding is it would be two separate programs and they’re not linked.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mrs. Groenewegen.

That’s all I have for right now. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. I have Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I believe it was Mr. Ramsay who had a debate item that kind of interested me. It was with the graduation rates and course completion rates and that’s something that I’ve been dealing with the Minister on over the last couple of weeks, especially in the smaller regional centres. I’m sure I agree with the Minister and the department, that whatever we can do to improve graduation rates and course completion rates would be a boon to our young people, to our schools and to our communities.

I came upon a gap, perhaps in the system and maybe the Minister can address that for me, is that I propose, I said, hey, there is this nice program I ran across, I got support from the community of Liard. I said the department should look at this program, specifically with the Sunchild E-Learning Program that has been used around Rocky Mountain House on the smaller reserves there. Here is a program where they are improving graduation rates, astronomically in our terms, in our levels, because theirs is at 80 percent and ours is at 45 percent. It is even smaller yet as we do the breakdown and get to the smaller communities, Mr. Chairman.

Of course, then course completion rates are right up there in these small communities, and they are similar communities, they are aboriginal communities, aboriginal schools, with the same types of social problems happening in their homes and their communities. Yet they are achieving some success. I am saying I would like to check it out, how it can be applicable to us, what we can learn from it, indeed if there is anything there that we can use.

That is all my proposal was, Mr. Chairman. I didn’t want to do a whole scale change of the department, their priorities and all their goals and objectives which they have strived so hard to do. All I wanted to say is that here is something that is working in another community. Can we look at it? Can we get our department officials to seriously consider it? Because anything, like I said earlier, Mr. Chairman, that improves our communities and the lives of our people in those communities, we are going to have to do it. In fact, I am obligated to do it and if I chose to ignore it, then they will choose to ignore me too. Perhaps if the Minister can address that at this point.

I know that we have some type of programming out there. Just looking back in the main estimates, Mr. Chairman, there is a category, education operations and development, I think that is something that will fit in there. I noticed that the budget, in that particular line item, increased by $700,000 and the Minister indicates to me that he checked his front pockets and he checked his back pockets and they are both empty and there is nothing more he can do. I see that they doubled the thickness of the wallet, so I don’t know how he can say that, Mr. Chairman.

Perhaps I can just get the Minister to comment with respect to new development objectives, exploring new options and keeping our mind open, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps I will just deal with the Member's last question first, where he is talking about the $700,000. Just so that he doesn’t think that I manage to keep any of it between my front and my back pocket, that money is all going to Alberta. That is what they are charging us to use their Alberta achievement tests, which is the test that we are using in grades 3, 6 and 9. They have started charging us now for using their Grade 12 tests. Not one penny of those dollars is sticking in my pockets, with this Assembly passing it on to Alberta. Just so you know.

In terms of the proposal the Member talked about, it is certainly something that is of interest to us. The Member is aware that the department has contacted the divisional education council. As I told the Member, the department doesn’t deliver education, we fund the people at the DECs to do that. When you are talking about delivering an educational program, that is where it has to come through.

We have contacted the DEC to examine their interest in this. We are prepared to work with the DEC to facilitate their examination of the Sunchild model. We are certainly prepared to discuss that with them and work with them to facilitate their examination of it, for consideration.

I will note that the Member is right; we do already offer the same kind of programming in the Northwest Territories as what Sunchild does. It is distance learning and we have offered that for quite some time.

It is interesting to note that at the Sunchild learning model they talk about how learning has to be community centred. It has to be embraced and promoted by the larger community and not just the school. If I remember a little bit earlier when asked what I thought what the biggest reason for success was, it was family support for education; family and community support. I think that is what we are seeing in the Tlicho region. That is what Sunchild says is the most important part. They also say that there has to be champions in the community for e-learning, there have to be key teachers and relationships. They say key teachers have to come from the First Nations community. For us, that has always been a challenge, finding enough teachers in the North from the home communities and it is certainly one of the reasons we introduced the Teacher Education Program in the Northwest Territories, was to increase the numbers of home-grown teachers, because we really do need to get more of them.

I think that what we will find is that this model is very much in line with what we see as necessary for success, and we are prepared to work with the DEC to help them examine the model to see whether or not it can work for the community. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. While I am glad to see that we are almost in agreement, the fact remains that we may have similar programs, but they are succeeding and we’re not. That is all I wanted to explore and say okay, fine, I didn’t realize that we had a similar model and I am glad that the Minister pointed that out. But just the same, they are succeeding, we are not. Why? What is the difference here? We are going to have to learn from them, at least have a really good look. We don’t have to do anything more than have a good look. If there is something to be learned from it, I’m sure they would be more than willing to share how they are doing things. Perhaps we can dedicate some resources, but we will cross that bridge when we come to that, Mr. Chairman.

The main thing that I would like to point out is that they are succeeding and we’re not. I am supportive of us going down and having a look, if that is what it is going to take. The Minister indicated that they are not willing to bring them up, but we should go down, we should see exactly where they are succeeding and we’re not.

In the previous discussion here on my first round of comments, the Minister mentioned something to me and something clicked. He said, yes, we are moving our children along and he said that all the teachers are equipped to deal with students in their class who are lagging. But I don’t think that is true. For some reason they are not all prepared to do that, and yet we are moving along a group of class with some people that need special needs attention, they need that special attention.

I don’t know if it’s a huge astronomical cost to have a special needs assistant in each class. I don’t know what the inner workings of the department are. The Minister did also indicate that it is a priority of the DECs to indicate how many special needs assistants we need. Do we have any power to say there must be a minimum amount of SNAs, or is it all based on funding or available cash within the budgets of the DEC? The thing that I have been hearing is that definitely special needs assistants are necessary. I don’t know how to go about it, without going directly to the DEC and saying look, they are important. I am sure they know that they are very important and they are dedicating as much resources as they can. With that, Mr. Chairman, perhaps the Minister can comment on those for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What I said earlier is teachers are trained to deal with different grade levels in the classroom. It has always been the case that a teacher who's teaching Grade 4 would have some kids who are reading at Grade 3 level and some kids would be at Grade 5 level. It’s not unusual to have kids in a Grade 3/4 class reading at a Grade 2 or a Grade 6 level. Again, that’s not unusual. It never has been.

What we often hear from teachers in the Northwest Territories is they see more of that in the classroom here than what you might find in classrooms in other jurisdictions. So what would it take to put a special needs assistant in every classroom? I can’t tell you. But it would take money. It would take more money than what we are putting into supporting special needs right now. Yes, the decision is entirely with the DECs. They have to choose between classrooms of a certain size and a special needs assistant or perhaps different teachers. So they have to take a look at the number of dollars they get from us and then they make those decisions. It comes back to what Mr. Ramsay was saying earlier. You have different pupil/teacher ratios. So if you are funding at a ratio of 13 to one, they can run a classroom of 20 to 25 students and have special teachers that run programs for computers or that run gym classes only. Instead of having them all as teachers, they may choose to have more special needs assistants, so they could put a special needs assistant in every class. The boards are given that flexibility. So DECs have that flexibility within the funding that we provide them, but they are limited by the amount of funding that we give. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. I have Mr. Pokiak next on the list. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like more information with regard to the apprenticeship and employment training. I would like to refer to page 9-26. In 2003-04, they had $4.112 million. In 2004-05, they had $4.847 million. In the 2004-05 revised estimates, it was $4.847 million. There is probably about a $735,000 increase from 2003-04 to 2004-05. Is that because of numbers going up in terms of training at that time? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Minister.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, we don’t have with us the detail for the year 2003-04, so I can’t answer right now the Member’s question. I can promise that we will get the information for the Member by tomorrow, but I can’t tell him right now.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would appreciate that for the Members on this side.

Just following that, after the revised main estimates in 2004-05, going from $4.847 million, then in 2005-06, we are at $4.666 million. Is there a reason why there’s a decline in that, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Part of that is $84,000 which was an elimination of the wage subsidies to diamond manufacturing employers. This was a program that was in place for some time but was sunsetted. The other is an internal reallocation of salary funding of $94,000. We transferred funding from apprenticeship to fund an existing career development officer position because we were able to get funding for the apprenticeship position through the Labour Market Development Agreement. So we are basically using federal money to fund a position. That’s why we have moved our money out.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With regard to career development, adult employment training programs, there was an issue that just recently developed in Fort Simpson, actually it’s been ongoing for awhile, which is we have an old facility that they call La Pointe Hall. They call it Deh Cho Hall now. Public Works is looking at decommissioning it and tearing it down. It’s huge. There must be 10,000 square feet in that place. Traditionally it’s been used as a training facility over the last 10 years for adult education courses. They are looking at tearing it down. I was thinking how are we going to replace that? I don’t see how that’s going to be done. I wonder if the Minister can comment on that. How do they handle it in other communities and regions in terms of training facilities? I don’t know if I am asking him to build us another facility; it’s probably not realistic. But what is realistic, Mr. Chairman, is we can get the department to say they need that building and somehow we can save it, perhaps talk about it as a heritage building. It has a good foundation. They were saying it’s good for another 100 years, and actually I have to pursue it further. There have been a few reports that claim it’s not a very good building, but everybody is begging to differ.

How does the Minister see us using this Deh Cho Hall in Fort Simpson? Are there any other areas they have, unknown to me, where they can help and train our people in Fort Simpson? What do they do in other regions in terms of training? Do they have facilities? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The fire marshal has issued an order that will see the building closed fairly soon, within the next year. So the Member is right; we have to look at new space. There is going to be a meeting on Monday with Public Works and territorial ECE staff to take a look at planning the consultation process to figure out what to do. The issue that we are going to have is going to be that there are some non-government agencies in that space now that wouldn’t normally be in government space and that we can’t plan to provide government space for in the future. So that is going to be a community challenge. We are going to have to work with the community to see what the options are. As the Member says, it’s going to be a challenge.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Minister for that answer. It certainly seems appropriate that department officials had to have some input into this. Of course, the community is going to have some input. I don’t know if the Minister is the lead department for this, but at one point the community is going to have to have input because in my constituency meetings, people were saying it’s a shame to lose this building. In fact, if it can’t be a government office, can we just keep it? Can we maintain it for a training facility, because it’s ideal for that kind of stuff? I don’t know if it has to be classified as a government building in order to be turned into a vocational centre or regional training centre of some type. I would just like to urge the Minister that we have to bear that in mind. We need community input and there must be some way to save all that space because it's a great place. Simpson is the regional centre. We need that space. I don’t know if the Minister can comment on how we can…(inaudible)…use without classifying it as government. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know I have attended a lot of standing committee meetings in that building and held public hearings in that building. It is a great old building, but we are not sure whether a change in ownership would change the fire marshal’s position. So we’ll have to take a look at it. It could certainly be a part of the process we embark on, on Monday, to take a look at that issue.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. We are on page 9-25, activity summary, advanced education and careers, operations expenditure summary, $41.053 million.

Agreed.

Page 9-27, activity summary, advanced education and careers, grants and contributions, contributions, continued on page 9-28, advanced education and careers, grants and contributions, total contributions, $30.207 million.