Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further to my opening Member’s statement earlier today, I’d like to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment some questions in regard to the Aurora College campus in Inuvik and the lack of programs that are actually at the campus itself, in the facilities.
I would just like to ask the Minister, starting off: How are programs distributed throughout the three campuses in the Northwest Territories? How do we decide which campus gets which program and moving forward from there? That will be my first question. Just how are programs distributed, diploma programs, certificate programs, throughout the three campuses in the Northwest Territories?
The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. First of all I would just like to congratulate all those graduates, over 141 graduates between the three campuses. That’s a huge accomplishment for those individuals and I’d just like to applaud them for that.
The programs that have been distributed through the three campuses are based on the needs of the communities and through the venue of the Aurora College Board of Governors. As you know, the Board of Governors is meeting in the next two weeks, I believe in Inuvik, and those are the opportune times to ask those questions or give ideas and suggestions on various programs that should be delivered.
I understand where the Member is coming from. I will be addressing that with the current board chair and also the president. As we move forward, I would encourage also the Members to approach the board representative from a regional perspective. In that fashion, they do make the decisions as a board of governance. We provide them up to $30 million to deliver programs across the Northwest Territories. I will be forwarding that information to the board governor. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know the Minister can’t answer the second question I was going to go into, but has the Minister, speaking with his colleagues on the Executive Council and Cabinet, talked about what types of programs are needed for the Inuvik-Tuk highway, for the early childhood Children’s First Centre or the other projects that we have going on in Inuvik? Has he spoken with his Cabinet colleagues to say we need these programs in Inuvik so that our leaders, as stated in the statement earlier, do get addressed and we want to hold accountable providing those programs? Has he spoken with his Cabinet colleagues to get those exact education programs for the Aurora College so the local people can become our leaders in the future? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, yes I have. We will continue to pressure that at the Cabinet level. At the same time, I have a board chairs meeting that consists of the college and all the education board chairs, and we discuss the communities’ needs. If there are ideas generated or suggestions, then we will work with that. At the end of the day, the Board of Governors makes that decision based on the communities’ needs. They work with the community representatives what is required, whether they be the activities happening in the Beaufort-Delta, Sahtu region or Deh Cho region. It will be based on that. We get a lot of feedback. From the feedback, we discuss around the table with educational leaders and develop programs based on that. This is an area that we closely monitor. We will continue to make changes to our programming for the Northwest Territories that will benefit the North. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, being new to the Legislative Assembly, I’m finding out new processes, the way things are being done. My understanding, from what the Minister just said, is the board of directors make the final decisions on where programs are being offered. Why is there not a process where the Minister might make the final write-off on where these programs are sent? Or would the Minister take those recommendations from the board of directors, bring it back to standing committee, and standing committee can have some recommendation into how those programs are being delivered?
Obviously, we have a strong voice here, small communities, rural and remote communities that do need these training programs. Would the Minister be open to having that as a process, bring in recommendations from the board of directors to standing committee and having dialogue from there so that we have a greater interest in how these programs are being offered throughout the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, we do go through an annual basis before we distribute funding to the college so they can deliver programs, trying to get feedback from the Board of Governors on what is needed and to make changes.
As we know, there are a lot of community learning centres for the Northwest Territories that need to be fully taken advantage of. There are all of these different programs that should be delivered at the community level. I will take the Member’s suggestion seriously into consideration. I will be working with the Board of Governors, the chair and also the president to move this forward and identify what changes are required at the regional or community level. I will bring that forward for the Board of Governors. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
