Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to talk today about A Shared Responsibility that’s going to be tabled later today. Once again, I think it’s a great step forward. I’m curious, though, has the department, has the Minister developed a comprehensive evaluation framework so that we can actually assess over time whether or not -- the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, yes -- it’s actually working. Has an evaluation framework been developed to go along with this plan?
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. An evaluation form will come out of this framework that’s going to be before us. We seriously want to monitor each and every recommendation that is brought forward and the program changes that we will be making within our Department of Education. So it’s all preliminary right now, the recommendations that are before us today. Definitely evaluations will be part of the process.
That’s good to hear. We’ve been here before. We’ve had plans to revitalize aboriginal languages in the North before and I think this is a very good one. It’s building upon some of the successes we’ve had in the past.
Over the last 10 years the number of aboriginal people that identify their aboriginal language as their mother tongue has decreased as has the number of people using it in their homes. What I’m curious about, specifically when it comes to an evaluation framework, is will the department be collecting information on mother tongue and home language as well as the ability to diverse so that we can actually calculate language shift in the Northwest Territories to see that we are getting results. If there’s no mechanism to track whether the mother tongue numbers are going up and the home language numbers are going up, we won’t be able to determine whether in fact what we’ve done is working. Will that type of information be collected as we move forward with this plan?
I agree with the Member that we need to have a mechanism in place for the tracking and monitoring and evaluating of our programming. We want this strategy, the plan, to be successful. I believe the Member did indicate that this will be part of the legacy that we’ll leave behind for years to come. Revitalizing our languages, there will definitely be a mechanism in place to monitor it every step of the way.
Once again thanks to the Minister. It sounds like we’re agreeing. I would like the Minister to commit to actually putting in some system to track the aboriginal language shift over time, which means collecting things like the number of individuals who identify their aboriginal languages as their mother tongue and those that also indicate they’re using it as their home language. I think tracking the language shift every two or three years could actually be an important indicator to evaluate if the revitalization measures put in place are successful. I think we both want the same thing. I think everybody wants the same thing. We want these aboriginal languages to be healthy and strong. If I can get him to commit to tracking that specific type of information, I really feel that those indicators will help us to determine success in the long run.
The aboriginal languages will likely see some shift, because we want this to work. At the same time, we need to gather the information. We have done that along with the package that we have before us. Mr. Krutko did mention numbers as well that are out there that we have used so far. We will be monitoring that and collecting more data over the next two or three years. We need the committees, the language specialists, committee experts, the community members to provide that information as well. We will be working closely with the community. My department will be working with the Members as well as the communities very closely, a monitoring mechanism.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
