Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I talked about the celebration of students who have graduated from universities, colleges and other post-secondary institutions. I want to specifically focus on the Northwest Territories Aurora College graduates. These students have made some huge sacrifices to take their studies in the North, to leave their communities, and they have made sacrifices to the families. They have also done things that I just don’t know how they did it. They take on extra jobs, one or two jobs, study late at night to get a degree or diploma or certificate.
I want to ask the Minister, with our continuous support of services to these students through these hard times, what is the department doing to look at ways that we can help the students with large families away from home living in cramped conditions to help them through their educational studies as they attend either Inuvik, Yellowknife or Fort Smith institutions? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First and foremost is congratulating all the college grads throughout the Northwest Territories. We are very, very proud of them. Obviously, we want them to further their education success, as well, then, upon completion, return back to the Northwest Territories so we can offer them a northern attractiveness when it comes to workforce development.
Part of the Student Financial Assistance program is, again, one of the best across our nation and also international world renowned as well. We continue to provide those subsidies, those services to our students, whether it be in the certification of the diploma programming degree or master’s program or even Ph.D. Our students are now pursuing Ph.Ds. We have increased our SFA, so we can increase the disability area, professional areas. So, those are areas we can continue to monitor and we’ll make changes that reflect our northern students. Mahsi.
I want to let the Minister know that I would like to continue tracking the types of support services that are going to be looked at for continued support for our Aurora College students and in our institutions. I also want to say to the Minister, I would like, one day, to see our learning centres in our small communities take part in the celebration like we have done in Fort Smith, Yellowknife and the Inuvik campuses. We have had a good celebration in our own communities in our learning centres.
Is the Minister looking at ways that we can improve our community learning centres so that one day we can also have a celebration in one of our small communities at our learning centres? Is that a possibility?
Yes. It’s a great possibility. In fact, I’ll be addressing that with the Board of Governors when we’re meeting in June. We’ve already addressed with the Board of Governors a while ago, and they are developing their corporate plan for a long-term strategy. This will obviously be part of their strategy, community learning centres in all communities. They should be producing highly skilled, qualified people. That’s my view, that’s my push, and I fully support that. The Members support that, as well, so we’ll continue to push that forward.
In my research specifically in the Sahtu communities, I have noted that the high school students with greater or higher grades needing diplomas or certificates in the Sahtu. Norman Wells has 89 percent of students. Colville Lake is 78; Fort Good Hope, 68; Deline, 62; and Tulita, 58. These are good start points for measurements to say at some period of time that we want to get 100 percent of these students that have a higher than Grade 12 diploma. This leads me to my third question.
I understand from the last session, and I’ve been pressing the Minister very hard on a Sahtu needs assessment, because we have opportunities that are knocking on our doors. I need to know, is this needs assessment going to be released? What are the next steps? We need to get these students who are willing to work, who want to work, and get them trained now in the Sahtu.
First, I’d like to commend the Sahtu region and the communities for their academic success. Congratulations to them. The needs assessment that the Member is referring to is before our department now compiling all that information. I know the Member has addressed that issue in the House on numerous occasions. Now it’s before us within the department. Now we’re compiling all the information from other jurisdictions, as well, because we are looking at a territorial-wide training initiative and how it’s going to look in the Sahtu region. The Member alluded to earlier about the program development institution potentially and a May tour and so forth. Those are the discussions that we are going to have, and I will update the Members once that is available by the end of this summer and the fall time.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to having this needs assessment discussed within the Sahtu, the leadership and the communities. I want to ask the Minister as I’ve also been pressing with the help of my colleagues on a feasibility study with the Sahtu technical institution, and that’s going to be greatly needed in the Sahtu. I want to ask the Minister if he can provide the House and the people in the Sahtu, where is that specific project at, at this moment now?
Again, it was brought up in this House about the Sahtu and will there be a training institution. We were waiting on the training needs assessment and the assessment of the communities, which involves the stakeholders, the industry, the community leaders and community educators. Now we have that package and now we need to identify what’s needed in the Sahtu region when it comes to program development and also a training centre area, how is that going to look. Based on the package that we received, those are options that we’re going to create and then deliver that to the Sahtu region.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
