Debates of March 3, 2015 (day 69)

Good afternoon. I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order and ask, what is the wish of the committee? Ms. Bisaro.

Wendy Bisaro

Frame Lake

Thank you, Madam Chair. We wish to continue with TD 188-17(5), Northwest Territories Main Estimates 2015-2016, with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Is committee agreed?

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.

Thank you. We will resume after a brief break.

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I would like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. The next department before us is the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. I would like to ask Minister Lafferty if he would like to present his opening comments on the department. Minister Lafferty.

I am pleased to present the 2015-16 Main Estimates for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. This budget strives to strike a balance between being mindful of the economic outlook of the NWT and making critical investments in key areas. These include early childhood development, education renewal, reducing the cost of living, improving support to those most vulnerable and bringing services closer to the people. Overall, the department’s estimates propose an increase of $4.2 million, or 1.4 percent, over the restated 2014-2015 Estimates. These estimates continue to support the objectives of limiting expenditure growth in order to sustain the long-term sustainability of the fiscal framework. Despite the government-wide fiscal situation, ECE’s budget identifies significant investments. Either through re-profiled or new funding, ECE will invest in key initiatives all of which will have tangible, direct and concrete benefits for the people we serve.

Highlights of the proposed estimates show that ECE is not standing still. They include:

$1.75 million to increase benefits for food, clothing and other incidental expenses. This will ensure income assistance clients receive adequate benefits to meet their needs and to stay current with the cost of living. This amount is part of the planned $6.6 million investment to be phased in over the next four years. It will provide a direct benefit to those most in need.

$548,000 for increased costs associated with the Income Assistance program. This is largely coming from increased client uptake and projected increases for rent, fuel and utilities.

$390,000 to be invested in the Early Childhood Staff Grant Program for licenced daycare centre staff. This $900,000 program will begin to address the fact that early childhood staff are paid some of the lowest wages in the country. It marks a real benefit to the people who care for children.

a two-year pilot project to create five new employment service officer positions for each region of the NWT. This will reduce income assistance caseloads by providing intensive individual support to targeted income assistance clients in finding work or entering training programs. This initiative not only supports our government’s decentralization objective but improves services to people in our communities and regions.

a transfer of $1.6 million to the NWT Housing Corporation to add 75 new public housing units specifically for income assistance recipients. This cost neutral program will provide income assistance clients in new public housing units with decreased rent. It will also allow for an easier transition to the workforce because of the NWTHC’s graduated rent to income scheme.

a reduction of $1.95 million as part of the government-wide expenditure reduction in 2015-2016. This money comes from various discretionary areas internally throughout the department, paying attention to avoid program cuts that affect people. I also note that we have sheltered education authorities and the Aurora College from passive restraint.

$4.7 million for Collective Agreement increases for education authorities, the Aurora College and the department.

The proposed departmental estimates continue to support the priorities of the 17th Assembly. Specific activities in support of these priorities include:

ECE has initiated an ambitious system-wide review of the education system. We have finalized a 10-year Education Renewal Framework, supported by a three-year action plan. The plan has been developed in collaboration with our education partners. It includes significant investments totaling $6.2 million over the three-year time frame. Many of the initiatives are one- or two-year pilot projects. This will provide us the opportunity to test our ideas and correct our course of action based on our experience throughout their implementation.

This budget proposes an investment of $1.24 million to continue the activities listed in the Early Childhood Development Action Plan. As you know, the plan focuses on families and their children from birth to five years of age. Each of the 22 actions together will go a long way to ensure that every child, family and community, including those most at risk, have access to high quality, comprehensive, integrated early childhood development programs and services that are community driven, sustainable and culturally relevant.

The revitalized Territorial Nominee Program has demonstrated early success and is projected to exceed all expectations in 2015-2016. It will be a major contributor to supporting the growth strategy. The NWT Express Entry System will see employers linked with potential skilled immigrants, growing the population and improving our skilled NWT labour market.

Our Skills for Success initiative promises to ensure Northerners have the right type of skills for the jobs our economy will generate now and in the future. As we reach out beyond our borders to grow our population, it is just as important to ensure Northerners derive direct benefits from our economy by becoming active participants in our wage economy.

an investment of $2.2 million dollars for the implementation of ECE’s French Language Services Operating Plan, which will ensure that we meet our obligations as directed by the Supreme Court of Canada, and

$6.7 million for Aboriginal language services to promote and support the nine official Aboriginal languages of the NWT. This includes $3.5 million in funding to Aboriginal governments to help them implement their five-year Aboriginal language plans.

Lastly, ECE proposes to do its part in support of a key priority of this Assembly. We propose to decentralize an additional nine positions into regional centres. This brings our total to 16 positions being decentralized. By doing this, we will increase employment opportunities in the regions and bring services closer to the people we serve.

We could do a lot more with additional money but I believe that we are making best use of the already considerable investment in our education system, early childhood development programs, income security programs, post-secondary education, official languages and culture and heritage. That concludes my opening remarks. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. At this time I’d like to ask the Minister if he’d like to bring witnesses into the Chamber.

Yes, I do, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Is committee agreed?

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.

Thank you. I’ll ask Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort the witnesses to the table.

Minister Lafferty, for the record, could you please introduce your witnesses.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. To my left I have Gabriela Eggenhoefer, deputy minister of Education, Culture and Employment; to my immediate right is Olin Lovely, director of corporate services; and to my far right, associate deputy minister Dana Heide with Education, Culture and Employment. Mahsi.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. I will now turn to Members and ask if they have any general comments on the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to welcome the department here today. This is a very complex department and leaving it to the end of business plans usually is probably for a good reason. It allows committee to have a more thorough time with other departments to prepare for this very large department. In fact, it almost begs the question that with this department’s size and stature, it should almost be looked at as two departments in some respects, given the complexities that we have.

That being said, I appreciate the opportunity to talk with respect to some of the opening comments we heard from the Minister. I want to dive into a topic that didn’t get a lot of attention in the opening comments which I think is fundamentally a driving force for the department over the next little while.

First and foremost, I want to raise attention to a comment in the opening comments of the Minister when he said, “I also note that we have sheltered education authorities and the Aurora College from passive restraint.” As much as I appreciate that comment, I have to chuckle somewhat. Because although that might be true in one sense, we know that education authorities have not been immune to some of the clawbacks for some of the surpluses that they have achieved through good management skills in the last year to pay for things like junior kindergarten. When I do see comments like that, I take some of those comments with a grain of salt and I just wanted to put that on the record.

In as much as I appreciate the efforts – and again it’s true the department is not standing still, I will give kudos to the department for that – what was basically silent in the opening comments and relatively silent in his budget per se is the issue of the Educational Renewal Initiative. ERI has been touted as literally the panacea of change. This is the guiding principle of what this department is going to be embarking on to put a lot of corrective actions in place for the next generation to come. I find it very concerning that, like I say, it was just mentioned extremely briefly in the opening comments. I just wanted to take a minute to air my concerns that I have as a Member. This is also echoed, and has been echoed by some of the Members of the committee, as well, as we embark on what I consider is year two on the ERI Action Plan.

While scouring through the myriad of information that we have at our disposal through Hansard, we know that ERI planned, over that three-year period, just over $6 million. So, in essence, we are in year two where we were led to believe it requires about $2 million for the implementation of this action plan. This is over and above the $150 million that is allocated annually to education authorities under the School Funding Framework. Although it is a smaller amount from an investment point of view, it is still significant. The reason why I want to draw the attention to it is I find there are a lot of complexities. This is a very complex matrix to understand. I would assume it’s even more of a complex matrix to deliver from the department’s perspective, and with over nine commitments and over 18 action areas, it’s clear that the department has its work cut out for it.

I’ll give the credit where credit is due. The plan itself is fairly impressive by design. It’s definitely a collaborative piece that’s taken a very coalescing and maturing approach and it has a lot of deliverables with some very, I would call it a very aggressive yearly target. So for those criteria I give the department kudos for bringing such a fairly complex target or innovation plan to the House. But I do have concerns, and concerns that are not oozing off of the opening comments and concerns that are not really oozing in the budget that we have before us.

Of course, first and foremost, I’ve got the concern about the resources and the constraint around the resources for this plan to actually come to fruition – as we heard, passive restraint from the Minister today. We’ve heard from the Minister of Finance that we’re dealing with a financial situation that’s very challenging. We’ve heard terms like we’re making best use of existing resources. All these broad swaths of comments really put credence to the comments, “how are we funding this monstrosity,” which really, as I said earlier, will become the guiding principles for our education system.

So with that, again, the Minister may want to comment to how is it that we’re finding the funds to do so. It sounds like we’re doing it internally. But given the magnitude and the importance of such an innovation, you would think that we would be putting significant dollars, significant investment dollars annually in the budget to address that in a way that I think the department has touted this as being literally the change that’s before us.

More importantly, the concern I have around ERI is how the department is deciding its priorities within it. As I said, nine commitments, 18 action areas. There are tons of project charters imbedded in there and it isn’t clear if the commitments within the ERI are actually placed in any type of sequential priority. It’s really hard for Members, and if it is hard for Members to understand, I can only imagine how difficult it is for the general public or even people within the education system to understand what the order of importance is to the department. What’s happening first, what’s happening second, or are they all happening at the same time? I think that’s an area to which a lot of us are struggling around.

Again, there’s no denying. I’ve spoken and many people have spoken around the complexities, around our Aboriginal language culture-based education, many layers of governance there that are competing, some redundancy built in there. We’re talking about inclusive schooling, the directives around that. Which ones get more priorities and, again, that clarity is a bit lacking and one in which I do challenge the department. If there’s one thing you can make better it’s to provide better communication on those priorities. What are we working on next? What’s the next big hurdle? There is the appearance that we’re kind of just all scattered doing all our different initiatives and yet somehow at the end we’re going to coalesce to a common point of fruition where we’re going to say, “We’re done now.” Many Members don’t see it. If we don’t see it as Members, I can’t see how the public can see it as being doable, as well, within the life of what we’re trying to achieve.

Again, when we talk about priorities, lots of discussion about the area of self-regulation, and I’ll be the first to say I appreciate the concept of self-regulation in terms of where it fits in terms of working on attaining graduation standards. But really, is this something, does it have higher importance over other things? As we talked about the other day, we’ve got various initiatives. There’s one big initiative I read there. It says, “new NWT high school system to complete various pathways and recognize school completion milestones.” These are the type of statements that I’m reading in the ERI. When I read that I go, what does that mean? If I can’t figure it out as an MLA, what does that mean? The general public isn’t going to figure it out either. So, very broad. Are these broad statements? I don’t want to use motherly because it’s not. I’m sure there are guiding principles in mind, but they are very difficult.

Again, as indicated in the House the other day, I spoke to the phasing out of the Alberta Achievement Test, AATs, and looking at any type of continuity during this overlap as to when these new assessment instruments would be in place. My concern is baseline. The parents’ concerns are baseline; the kids’ concerns are baseline. We live in a world where we want to know how we fit in the world of competitiveness. So when we hear that AATs are being phased out, many of us are going, well, what are we going to use? Whatever we do use, are we masking potential issues that are still going to be lurking in the shadows of our education system as to whether we’re meeting basic standards at a national level? These questions are still not readily available for people, including MLAs.

Finally, the challenge, I know – and it would be a huge challenge to write a document of that magnitude – is how the readability of that document really is in its basic format. What I mean by that is there are so many synonyms imbedded within this ERI where it talks about commitments, initiatives, areas of action, draft plans, project charters. Again, so many moving parts, so many different synonyms that the plain language component sometimes is missed.

So, I did spend a lot of my time on the ERI component, which I think was definitely missing within the opening comments, but I’m sure I’ll have more as we get into detail. Those are my opening comments. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Any response, Mr. Lafferty?

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Obviously, when I talk about the passive restraint, we haven’t touched the school boards and also the Aurora College. More specifically to passive restraints, obviously it had an impact on our department, all the departments across the Northwest Territories. So I’ve been dealing with the school boards and the college on this particular subject, notifying them that we’re not going there at this time. I’ve respected that and I continue to work closely with the school boards at this level.

The whole ERI, Education Renewal and Innovation, obviously it’s a large initiative, it’s a huge undertaking and it will make drastic changes in the lives of our community members. It will be very beneficial. We’ve identified approximately $6.2 million of our initiatives. As the Member stated, it’s over and above the $150 million, yes it is, and we feel that it’s very important that we highlight some of the worthwhile initiatives within our department to continue implementing this very important piece of work that’s before us.

We’ve highlighted 2014-15, $2.4 million; 2015-16, $2 million; and 2016-17, $1.798 million. So that adds up to the three-year plan of $6.24 million. This is a priority for my department and also for this government, as well, and we’ve heard over and over from the Regular Members and even the forum, starting from Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative until today, that we need to improve our overall education system. That’s what we’re doing. We’re making changes to our Education Act; we’re making changes to our education programming across the Northwest Territories. We have not made any drastic changes over the last three decades within our education system, so this is very important piece of work.

We’re fully aware that Alberta is making some changes, as well, within their overall education system. So we’re closely monitoring their system as well.

Yes, we need to have clear communication dialogues when it comes to having some of the programs that have been identified that some of the community members may not be fully aware of, but we will be out there, we will be out to the communities, out to the regions talking about the whole Education Renewal and Innovation. We want that to be planted in everybody’s thinking. Even the kids need to be aware of what we’re planning and the changes. We’re also working with our partners across the Northwest Territories. The Literacy Council obviously plays a key role in developing an overall communication strategy, a plan to deliver plain speak language on the Education Renewal and Innovation. This is an area that we feel that we need to have plain speaking language on the Education Renewal and Innovation.

The AATs, obviously Alberta is going away with that. They’re doing another student assessment of their programming. Again, we are working very closely with them and how it’s going to look for the Northwest Territories. We are developing some areas of initiatives in that respect as well. As I stated before, the education system within Alberta is also changing, so both Alberta and the Northwest Territories are on the verge of overhauling our education system for the betterment of our jurisdiction.

Those are just, I believe, the key points that I wanted to address on the Member’s comments.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Any further general comments? Ms. Bisaro.

Wendy Bisaro

Frame Lake

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a number of comments in no particular order. This is such a large department that it’s kind of hard to know where to start.

I appreciate Mr. Dolynny’s comments about ERI. It is a huge undertaking, and I appreciate the Minister’s response as well. But it is a huge undertaking and I do have to say that I am still concerned that the department is trying to fund most of the changes that they’re making through the ERI Initiative. They’re trying to make those changes with money from within. If we are ever going to effect change and do it properly it needs to… In most cases when it’s a new initiative, it needs new money.

That leads me right into junior kindergarten, which was an initiative. It was funded basically from within, and I don’t think it was funded properly. It took money away from school authorities and put it into the Junior Kindergarten Program, and basically we’re robbing from Peter to pay Paul. I have to reiterate that I don’t think that a new initiative should be put into place by taking away from organizations which already have a good use for those funds.

I wanted to comment a bit on school attendance. The Minister made a statement the other day about school attendance and the importance of it. I agree wholeheartedly with the Minister. It’s absolutely important that we keep the kids in school. We’ve started on a, the royal we, the department has started on a campaign to try and increase attendance, and shortly after the Minister’s statement, Members received pamphlets and posters in our office. I looked at those today and I’m concerned about the money that we’re spending on these and whether or not it’s going to be for good value. I’m not at all convinced that posters and pamphlets are going to keep our kids in school. I think it needs a broader campaign. I believe at some point the Minister mentioned that there are many stakeholders requiring to be involved, and there absolutely does. We have to involve the parents in getting the kids to stay in school; we have to involve band councils and chiefs and local leaders in getting the kids to stay in school. I haven’t seen a plan from the department on how we’re going to do that, how we’re going to involve the people, more people than just the department in trying to increase our attendance. If we don’t have an all-encompassing campaign involving many people, it’s not going to succeed. I firmly believe that just having pamphlets and posters in the schools or in the community is not going to work.

The Alberta Achievement Tests have been mentioned. I will have a question when we get there. I’m a little confused about whether or not we are still using those tests. I thought we weren’t. I thought in this current school year that we had done away with AATs.

Inclusive schooling is an issue and particularly the funding or how the department funds inclusive schooling. The Minister has been talking about evaluating how we fund inclusive schooling for at least two years, probably more like three or four, and we have yet to see any results of any evaluation. It has now been lumped into an evaluation of school funding in general, and that’s maybe okay, but it’s putting off again, for probably another year, any evaluation on how inclusive schooling is funded. This is long overdue. The School Funding Framework is overdue but the Inclusive Schooling Funding Framework is much more overdue, and I think we are not being fair to school authorities and children who need the biggest help, because I believe that they’re not being properly funded. Kids end up without assistance when they should have it. I’m disappointed that we are not going to see, I don’t think, any kind of a resolution to the inclusive schooling funding formula any time soon.

I’ve been talking a lot about income security in the last little while. The Minister knows that I have some problems with some of the ways that we interpret some of the policies and some of the regulations under income security. I don’t know if there is any intent on the part of the department to do an evaluation of income security. The last one was in 2007. I think it’s probably time that we did do another one, and it’s time that we compared ourselves to the rest of the country and find out whether or not we have policies which are either contradictory with other policies within government or policies which are punitive for our income support clients, because I think there certainly are some.

At committee in, well, I think it was when we reviewed business plans, committee talked a bit about Aurora College and the desire for Members to see the budget from Aurora College. I believe we were advised that we were going to see that budget and I don’t think we’ve seen it, so I will have a question when we get to that page.

I think the perspective of Members is that we give a huge amount of money to Aurora College and there ought to be some accountability from the college to the House, to the Members and to the committee that is responsible for education, which is the Committee on Social Programs. Yet, the Minister seems to say that any accountability should go through the Minister. I would disagree with him on that. I think that the college needs to be more open, certainly with Members, or the Minister needs to be more open with college information to Members, because we really have no opportunity right now. We don’t even get the budget, and we have no opportunity to have any kind of evaluation or consideration of how the college is spending their money.

I think that’s about it. I’m a little bit disjointed but I would like to just say that I’ll have questions when we get to each individual page, so I don’t need a response from the Minister unless he feels that he absolutely has to do that.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Member is not requesting a response from the Minister at this time. If there is anything he has a desire to respond to in this, maybe he could add it after the next Member who is going to provide general comments. Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had some opening comments, I guess, some of the things that have been coming up over the last year. Obviously, education is of great importance to most of us here. One of the biggest budgets here, obviously.

Some of my colleagues talked about, obviously, the pressure that junior kindergarten placed on our educators, our DEAs, the South Slave Divisional Education Board. I guess we were just concerned about how that rolled out, and obviously, we’re looking forward to reviewing and seeing how that will work out in the future. I think, from Hay River’s perspective, we had a lot of early childhood development programs in place, so there is a lot of pressure if junior kindergarten was a mandatory issue or had to be rolled out that it would affect a lot of those organizations, so we were highly concerned in that area. We’re looking forward to seeing how we can work with the department on some sort of Junior Kindergarten Program in some of the places that want it, but I think it has to be wanted and it can’t be a cookie cutter approach of this is the way we’re going to roll it out. I think regions and communities have to make a decision on how they want to affect this implementation of junior kindergarten. I’m looking forward to some of that discussion in the future.

The education renewal, obviously, I guess it’s hard for a lot of people to wrap their head around how we’re going to renovate the whole building and still be able to live here and live in the facility. I don’t know how we re-form education and still have education operational. Making some changes will put a lot of pressure on the cost. I’m not sure where and how we’re going to roll this all out. I’m not clear on the complete plan of how that’s going to happen. So, I mean, we’re hearing concerns about that and obviously we have our DEA and our council that are just a little bit leery of how that’s going to roll out. Because of the pressures that they have financially, they’re constantly looking at where the dollars are coming from. You know, debating whether they bus or not bus. Just to be able to find some dollars to keep programming going and, you know, keeping the kids educated.

Some other concerns there, obviously. You know, I think as a resource centre we see a lot of pressure, a lot more kids, you know, and obviously the social passing puts pressures in the classrooms. Because of the funding issues there aren’t as many assistants that we can put there. So there’s a lot of angst when we go to our meetings with our DEAs and councils to talk about stuff, because it seems like we’re asking more of them without any dollars attached to it. They’re obviously finding a lot of pressure, and I keep saying pressure because I walk into the building and you can just feel that there’s angst there. They’re concerned about how it’s going to roll out. The pressures that they currently have, how can they do more? You know, it’s very difficult for us to sit here and support the way some of the things roll out from the department when the DEAs don’t get a lot of consultation. They might get a quick visit, but, I mean, the whole process is they want to be able to implement it the way they want.

One of the things recently in talking in our constituency meeting, in talking to one of the people, was even the sponsored iPads that we’ve talked about, thinking that putting iPads into schools or putting them into early childhood development would be a great idea. But, I mean, the problem is that with that technology comes more need for support, more technical support, and we don’t really have that many people in the schools that have the IT support. So, I mean, we have keen teachers that will take an interest in it and they seem to be the go-to for that technical support but, you know, to get additional iPads, it sounds like a great idea for the youth, but when it puts more pressure on the teachers and somebody to deal with how that iPad broke down today or it’s not working the way it’s supposed to is a concern. I mean, that’s one concern we just heard recently.

You know, in this department, obviously I’ve talked a fair bit about linking our post-secondary students to the jobs that we offer, the vacancies that we have. I think we need to work harder and I think we’ve made some strides, some steps, to make sure we have a link, a contact with those post-secondary students. I think that’s one key to get more people from the Northwest Territories to come back and work in the Northwest Territories. Once they get back here, they start living here, they get jobs, they buy a house, you know, they’re entrenched in the community. So I think we need to work really closely with HR to get that. I don’t think we have that many students and maybe the Minister can give some information on the actual amount we’re dealing with, but it seems to me it could be manageable to be able to contact those people, especially with today’s technology, e-mails and stuff like that, social media, to get out the information of, you know, we want you to come back, and linking, you know, like I was asking this week with the Minister of HR, linking those jobs so that we have the ability to offer them a job before they get their last year done in their degree or their technical institution. You know, we have these skilled labourers that want to come back to the Northwest Territories, not even looking south because I already got a job, you know, in one of the communities or in Yellowknife or wherever I’m from. I’ve been able to land a job, so why would I even worry about looking anywhere else? That’s most of my comments, Madam Chair. If the Minister could give me a quick response, that would be great. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister Lafferty.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. We talk about the overall ERI. It’s a huge undertaking. We’re hearing from Regular Members that this is a big initiative, and we also hear about the JK, obviously the decision from October 30, 2014, to put a stop to the second and third phase and to continue with rolling out to the small communities for last year and also next year. So, we continue to work with the school boards on that. We have 19 communities going forward and 18 the following year.

Keeping the kids in school, obviously it’s a priority. We’ve given out posters and pamphlets. Obviously, this is for outside schools where kids usually hang out when they’re skipping class. It’s a message from their peers. It’s a message from the youth that they associate with. It’s not our message as a department, but it’s their messaging. So, I think we want to make that clear; it’s coming from the youth, all these messages. We’re hoping that this will get some attention from those individuals who are just wandering around in the community.

Inclusive schooling, obviously the evaluation status, Member Bisaro talked about that, when the report is coming out. Part of the report obviously will be concluded and ready for March 31, 2015. That is our target date, because this is another huge undertaking that we’re very serious about, how we currently fund the school boards.

Another one is Income Support, the policy. Obviously, the policy had a dramatic change in 2007 and we are going through another change in 2015, this year. So, with any policy we do make changes that reflect the needs of our clientele, the northern residents.

The college budget obviously will be before you, through my department. We provide funding on an annual basis and they decide operations and maintenance of the college. They have their own expenditure and they account to us, as well, as a department. So, we will be delivering that through this venue.

JK, again, a lot of pressure, as Member Bouchard has indicated. We are currently, again, continuing to work with the school boards on this particular area.

ERI, again, we are working with the Literacy Council to have plain language on what would be the funding, what kind of programs would be available and what changes are coming. We will be getting into detail, Madam Chair, as we get into our mains.

The iPad system that the Member has referred to, obviously that’s an area that we will be doing a pilot project beginning this month, in March. We’re dishing out at least a hundred iPads on a trial basis to the parents, and we’re going to find out where the kinks are and what needs to be fixed and so forth. Then, in the fall of this year, the remaining iPads will be distributed to the new parents. So we’re fully aware of the system support. The mechanism should be place, I fully agree with the Member. This is an area where we are working with the system within the Education department and also DECs and DEAs. They have their own resources that we need to work with on the IT.

Post-secondary students linked to job opportunities, this is exactly what we’re doing. It is part of the growth strategy. We have made some changes in our policy about how we can have easier access to post-secondary students. From here on, we are going to have access to those students, take them out for supper and hear their perspective and what their interests are. We have approximately 1,450 students who are accessing student financial assistance. Obviously, we want to see that number increase as well. We have made some changes so we can have access to those individual students so we know where they have job opportunities. Those are some remarks that were addressed to my attention. Mahsi.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Next I have Mr. Bromley.

Bob Bromley

Weledeh

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate this opportunity to comment on the department’s budget. I welcome the Minister and his staff. I think in the Minister’s opening comments it had a lot of keywords that the Members are very interested in: early childhood development, education renewal, cost of living, supports to those most vulnerable and so on. I was happy to see the capacity to both re-profile and achieve new funding for key initiatives in this department.

On the income assistance side there are a number of expenditures planned to improve that situation. I think it is $6.6 million over the next four years starting with our first fiscal year coming up. This, based on my written questions earlier in the term, would bring income assistance up to about $26 million. So we are steadily increasing the amount of subsidy we are putting forward for supporting our residents, but I would ask the question: how many people is this getting out of poverty as opposed to supporting them in poverty? How many people is this getting a job as opposed to supporting them in their unemployment? How many people is this reducing health care requirements for as opposed to keeping them in unhealthy situations and housing and so on?

We saw that a guaranteed annual income was a completely different model in the one comprehensive test done in Canada where it was done in a five-year run with an additional eight years of comprehensive monitoring was proven to test those sorts of things. Where is the innovative thinking? Is there an openness to consider doing this in one region? I would even support this for the Minister’s region or the Sahtu or wherever. Rather than just do the same thing harder and bumping up our subsidies every year without addressing these common issues, there is an opportunity to seek a more effective way in dealing with them in a more effective way that removes the issues.

Education renewal is something the Minister is getting a lot of feedback on and I would like to add my voice in support of this. I appreciate, in particular, the bit of focus and the concept of self-regulation, something that teachers are familiar with these days and I have learned a little bit about, and I also think we need the social and emotional learning approach. Perhaps that’s already considered in the Education Renewal Initiative.

Ultimately, I prefer to see the Education Renewal Initiative adopt the Finnish education model, as I’ve spoken about before. Yet, I see the direction we are taking with education renewal is at least a step in that direction and I’m happy to see that.

I’m not sure how this exactly fits in with the system-wide review. I would be interested in hearing more about that, and maybe that’s an ECE as opposed to a system-wide review. I’m not sure I have that right. I know the Minister did make a comment, a system-wide review of the education system. Where does education renewal fit in that? Again, I see a real opportunity in that case to explore how we can adopt and adapt the Finnish education system which has proven highly successful to our northern jurisdiction.

The expansion of early childhood development, I know the Minister knows it does my heart good to see investments in this area. Depending how those dollars are spent, are we going to have another iPad fiasco? Is this Chevron dollars or another fossil fuel agency that’s getting free advertising, government-sponsored advertising? I hope not. I hope that these are real on-the-ground programs, community-based programs that will work with families, parents-to-be and young families, as the Minister says, zero to five. We need to provide the students with fertile minds when they enter into the education system. They are quite different approaches there.

The Skills for Success Initiative I think is quite good in theory, but I would be concerned, as many others have who speak to me, over the trend to believe that we know through the influence of industry on us exactly what sort of skills are needed out there. To me and others, we are supporting the production of automatons, the big wheels of some rig, away from home and family with this sort of thinking. So I throw out a caution there. I think education should be focused on allowing students to develop their full potential. That’s been demonstrated to be the best for the economy, for the well-being of families and so on. That’s treading a line there, so I would urge the Minister to be cautious in that regard.

Decentralization, if there is any department that should already be decentralized, I expect it would be ECE. If or when this happens, I hope the department will look at a region with a very low ratio of government jobs per capita such as the Tlicho and Sahtu regions, for example. South Slave, of course, has a higher ratio even than the North Slave and I don’t see that kind of accommodation in the decentralization policy.

This is my last item. There is still a serious deed to provide Aurora College with the academic freedom that every other such institution in Canada enjoys and this one does not. I think that’s limiting them. There are some inefficiencies there, still misreporting and whatnot. I see we approved them for budgets in the mains. Their year-end report shows that they way overspend and somehow get the money from the department and not infrequently end up with a surplus, quite different numbers than what we approve. So there is a considerable amount of murkiness still with the whole Aurora College situation. I know we have tried to work on this, but we haven’t been successful. I think it’s a fertile area to keep examining and tuning up. The fundamental thing provides the academic freedom such an institution should have.

I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair. I look forward to the detail, but I would appreciate any remarks the Minister might have. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. First and foremost, obviously, the income security, improved programs. The Member asked if there have been any improvements, whether it be getting people off income security. We’ve had some changes with income security. Since 2009 we had approximately 3,400 cases and in 2013 it went down to 3,100 cases. There has been a drop of 8 percent over the last five years, approximately. That is a substantial change in our view. Obviously, we want to have a higher margin as well. That’s our target that we’re going to push forward with.

We are creating five employment service officers into the communities that will tackle those areas, as well, and having people ready for career choices. Those individuals will be working very closely with the community organizations. The 3,400, now it’s down to 3,100. Obviously, we want to decrease that number as well. We will be reporting back to standing committee on the progress at that level.

ERI, the self-regulations. There has been a lot of discussion in that area where we brought in experts, very professional in that field and provided workshops, provided training to our school system. Even the Regular Members attended as well. This has been very successful today even though it’s very preliminary. But we will continue to provide those types of services. Through that area, ERI obviously is also working in line with the Early Childhood Development Framework and there’s also the Skills for Success Initiative as well. There are three big ticket items within my department that go hand in hand from early childhood, zero to five, K to 12, post-secondary and even beyond to workforce development, having our people with the required tools. This is a prime focus of my department.

Education, allowing students to reach their fullest potential. Obviously, that is what we’re focusing on. From what we’ve heard from the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative, they want us to focus on early childhood, and that’s what we’re doing as part of one of our initiatives. Also, there has been talk about our secondary students are not ready for post-secondary, so ERI will be addressing that, as well, the discussion from the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. Through that venue it gave us a lot of feedback, and based on that, we have ERD, ERI and Skills for Success before us today.

Decentralization, how can we focus on those low-ratio, small communities. That’s our prime target. We are currently addressing that within our department, 15 positions through various communities throughout the Northwest Territories. Obviously, I’d like to see that number increase over time, and that is the target that we’re going to push forward within my department.

Obviously, Aurora College has been brought up on numerous occasions and how the reporting mechanism should be improved. This is an area that my department has been working very closely with the college board and also the senior staff on how we can improve in those areas. I take the Member’s words into serious consideration. Accountability plays a key role. That has been relayed to the college board already.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Committee, I have several Members: Mr. Yakeleya, Mr. Blake, Mr. Moses and Mr. Nadli. Next I have Mr. Yakeleya.

Norman Yakeleya

Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few comments. I was going to wait for detail; however, I’m going to make a few comments and I do not need a response from the Minister. I’m going to make my comments to the Minister and I’ll wait for some of the details.

I do want to say to the Minister that there are some really huge initiatives that are happening within his department, and one of the big initiatives is as a result, I’m hoping, from the achievement test results. It’s shown clear as day the state of education in our small communities. I’m not very proud to hold up that we are putting our children in that state of education even though we’re encouraging them to finish school. I really have to question the quality of their education. Some of my colleagues talked about some new initiatives going forward, and I’m looking forward from the department to move those initiatives and give strength. I have family and the Members have families in the small communities, either nieces or nephews. We’re responsible. We have to really fight hard for them in that area. There is a lot of work to be done in that area.

I also wanted to talk about the idea Mr. Bromley brought up about guaranteed income. I like that idea. Some ideas Mr. Bromley and I don’t share, but this one here I really like, and I think that we should try that somewhere in our Sahtu communities. I think that’s a good idea. I think that’s something that we really need to look at. There are so many concepts that could work. I’ve always talked about our generation that comes up, I mean, working for your own and becoming independent. Growing up in small communities we had to make do with what we had and rely on our own capabilities and skills, because, at that time, welfare wasn’t handed out so easy like this. We become so used to these, benefits you call entitlements. That’s not a good way to put it. But see if we can make it work where they can work it off and gain skills. I know that when they had the oil and gas activity, I know the Sahtu income support assistance went down quite considerably, according to the Minister. You talked about that, and it showed that done responsibly, the oil and gas does have a positive spin on our economics and to our government coffers and income support. But now they don’t have any, so it’s going back up again and dependency on government is even stronger. It’s a real challenging task. It’s almost, you know, what do we do? Where is this at in terms of helping our people?

I do want to say thanks to the Minister that you’ve helped us with the needs assessment in our region. I do want to thank you for that. It’s good to know the snapshot of the situation in the Sahtu and I can look at other small communities in the North. I’m looking forward to a phase two of that plan of the Sahtu needs assessment and going forward some of the initiatives here, and the community workers in our region is a real plus. The service centre employees are really making a big difference in our region. It’s a really good idea. The elders appreciate that because they can speak…(inaudible)…each other. They know the policies and they know where to go. That’s a really good initiative by the department.

I do want to say that we asked, and the Minister has responded by having the feasibility study for the Sahtu tech, to come out and work with the person and come into Norman Wells. He did his work on if there was going to be a concept, a model on a Sahtu technical institution in our region, what it will look like. I look forward to that report coming back, because that is something that the people have been asking for a long, long time.

There is lots of work that has to be done by this department. These are general comments. Again, I don’t need to have a responsible Minister. I just want to make comments there for this department here.

We have a lot of students in post-secondary which is really good to see. I’m very surprised the numbers are increasing. People want to go back to school because they can’t really do much in the community because it’s limited. There’s no economic activity going on. There are only so many teachers we can hire, so many nurses. Those jobs are pretty well guaranteed in the community and it’s kind of levelled off. Then we have a lot of young graduates who are coming out. They’re doing the best they can to get out of the community and get out of the region. They come here in Yellowknife, Smith or Inuvik and they’re going to school. I was very surprised to hear that the Land Corporation is sponsoring 30 students in some fashion. Your region did that, sponsoring young people. We’re doing it and other regions are doing it. I’m really happy to see that. They’re doing whatever they can. They have to get an education and come back to have a career. But even in that sense, even people who have Grade 3 have a very successful business in the Sahtu region, Grade 7. Some have successful businesses. It means that they know how to work. They’ve made sacrifices, getting up seven days a week. They know how to work. Their work ethic is strong.

So I guess…(inaudible)…the other equation to this is there are people that know how to work the system. It shows in what money we give out. It’s a big task there. I want to push right to when we finish our Assembly here. No slowing down. The train is gone and we’re going to keep going. You know what I mean? We have to keep going. We can’t slow down. For me, it’s a big department and I look forward to the details. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya, for those comments. Next I have on my list is Mr. Blake.

Frederick Blake Jr.

Mackenzie Delta

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a number of comments here. It’s not all negative. I know there are a lot of challenges in the department. I would just like to start out by saying, under the Aboriginal languages, I think our teachers are doing a very good job in the communities, in the riding I represent anyway. I can’t speak for any others, but it’s really encouraging to see young children, five or six years old, singing away in their traditional languages. I know the Gwich’in and Inuvialuit languages are at risk, but it’s really promising to see this take place in our communities. I would just like to let them know they’re doing a good job in that area.

Some of the other challenges that we are having are with social passing. I brought that up last week. A lot of parents believe we are not challenging our students. That’s the bottom line. They feel our students don’t really have to try to do their work. They know they’re going to pass anyway. It’s not like the way it used to be back when you had to get a passing mark. If you were below 50 percent, then you had to redo the grade over. They would like to see that system back in place. That way, our students have to do their best to get good marks, which also helps them when they move to post-secondary. They feel we’re setting them up for failure with social passing. I think it’s time to change back to the way we do business here.

Also, with junior kindergarten, I know it’s not mandatory, but some of the schools do want to try to make this work. But as we said awhile back, we need the proper funds to make this happen if we’re going to keep encouraging this. Doing it within our current budget is just not doable. Like anything else, if we want it to succeed, we have to give them the proper resources.

Also, under income support, I had a number of people who brought this up. It seems there isn’t anyone making sure that people who are on income support are either trying to find work or doing some sort of community service hours. That’s supposed to be mandatory in order to receive income support.

Also on the topic of income support, the community of Tsiigehtchic used to have an income support worker in the community a number of years back. They would like to have this service again. It’s time for them to have someone in the community who actually knows the people there and who needs assistance and feel they could provide a better service.

Also, under SFA, it has come up in the last couple of years. We have students who are trying to go to university, whether it’s in Alberta or other places, but at times they can’t get a full caseload so they’re not granted SFA. We’re supposed to be encouraging our people to go to university and college down in the South. We need to provide our students with the resources that they need, whether they’re taking two or three courses. As long as they’re trying to get a university degree, that’s the main thing. We need to encourage them.

Also, under the home heating subsidy, a lot of elders really appreciate this. That will help them, especially the homeowners. The cost of living up in our region is almost double what it is here in Yellowknife with the fuel costs and groceries. Some people are trying to do a little work on the side during this any chance they get, but they have a cut-off of employment. They’d like to see that increased if possible.

Under the small community employment, another great initiative, a lot of communities are taking advantage of this in the smaller communities. They’re doing a lot of capacity building in the communities, especially with cutbacks in the bands. This funding really helps to train their people and have employment where it’s really needed. With a 35 percent employment rate, it’s very challenging in our smaller communities. Those are the opening comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Yes, the Aboriginal language, obviously we’re starting to see results on whether it be the immersion programs, the early learning programming on the language. There have been some pilot projects in the communities. Now we’re pushing more into the communities and regions. We are starting to see results. It’s a very excellent initiative that we are working with our partners across the Northwest Territories.

When we talk about the passing peer placement, we’ve heard from various community members, elders, educators, parents, when we did the forum on Aboriginal student achievement, and we’ve heard mixed reactions from the general public. Some support, some not supporting. So through the educational renewal we want to tackle this area, how we can best mitigate that. Obviously, through my department, as it stands now, the policy does not prevent schools from retaining or holding back students if deemed appropriate or agreed upon by their parents. So it is a parent’s wish if they want to retain that student, their child back or move them forward. So we work closely with the district education council and also the authority and also with the parents and educators on what’s best for the child, to hold them back or pass with their peers. That has been ongoing for a number of years now. As I stated, there’s been mixed reaction. We’re doing the best we can to work with that, with our partners.

The JK, obviously, we provide options, in the Member’s riding as well, that they opt out. The review is underway, and based on the review, that should be available by this summer. Based on that it would have to be decided upon for the future of how it’s going to look for junior kindergarten to be delivered as of 2017 and onwards.

Income support worker, there was one in Tsiigehtchic, as the Member alluded to, a while ago. There have been some increases in caseloads in some of the communities. I’ll have to check if Tsiigehtchic is one of them; I can’t be sure at this point, I don’t have the information in front of me, but we will be gathering that information if a caseload is high in that region. If it is, then we are identifying some of the income security workers to these communities that are in high caseloads in addition to the workforce that they have. So now, obviously Tsiigehtchic is served out of Fort McPherson, so we’ll gather more information on that.

SFA, obviously the policy that we have is that in order to qualify for SFA you’ve got to have three courses or higher, and that’s been the standard process for quite some time now. Yes, I understand where the Member’s coming from that we need to support all students. There are a variety of subsidy programs as well. SFA is just one of the key areas. There’s the Labour Market Agreement that we have with the federal government that supports those individuals who want to pursue, whether it be the trades access or other programming and there’s also, at the community level, access programming. Then there are a couple more programs that are out there that we encourage those individuals to access as well. With SFA we will be coming back to the standing committee with some changes that we want to undertake as we move forward for short-term and long-term strategy. So, I will be presenting to standing committee on proposed changes that will benefit and also attract our students to come back to the North.

Small community employment has been very successful to date and we continue to support that project as well. We continue to make it a priority for my department on the long-term plans, as well, because it is building capacity at a community level, even at the regional level.

So, Mr. Chair, those are just some of the remarks for the Member. Mahsi.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Next I have Mr. Moses.

Alfred Moses

Inuvik Boot Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate being able to comment on our last opportunity with this department within the life of this government. You do learn a lot over the three years, whether it’s through the business planning or the main estimates budget discussions that we’re currently having. We’ve also had a lot of correspondence with this department here and you do learn a lot, especially if you chair the committee that’s the oversight for this department, in terms of what was said, reports that were done, documents that might have been tabled or even just more consulting and going out to try to get more information to make the best decisions. I’ll make reference later, and I may have had questions in the House about reports that we’ve done, but we’re kind of re-creating the same engagements that we’ve done before and I think that, you know, I guess the time for reporting and consulting is over. We need to start creating action within, not for us as a government but for the people and the youth, and I think that the sooner we can make these changes and start investing to create these changes and create action, then the better it is for our youth who are in the school system right now and the better it is for the Northwest Territories as a whole in terms of healthy, educated people free from poverty. That saying, which is one of our priorities, holds more true to this department specifically because of the education component and the income assistance component. I think that’s where we need to focus.

With that said, I do appreciate the dialogue that the department has had with standing committee over the last three years. Something that I have told the department is you do have committee support on initiatives that we’ve done, action that’s been taken, and we pretty well have support from all Members in moving forward because we all are here for the same reason, and that’s to get our youth educated, quality education so that they can be prepared for life but at the same time help with the economy in the Northwest Territories.

With that said, I know I won’t be asking for a response, maybe a comment is what I’m saying. But I know that the department does know that committee is asking for another meeting in the near future to discuss everything that you’re hearing here more in depth and get updates on some of these initiatives that were being discussed, because there’s been a lot of consultation over the last three years and I know committee wants it, I know the Minister wants it and we want to do it right for the people of the Northwest Territories.

I think this government’s been very strong in the sense of trying to support, trying to give the funding, trying to give the resources. Every opportunity in questioning every action that department does, because it really doesn’t impact us but it impacts the people of the Northwest Territories as well as our budgets. You know, we have had some small successes and we have the potential for huge successes if we do what we’re going to say and stop doing the reports and stop doing the back and forth paperwork and we start putting our words into action.

I want to just highlight some of the successes, and you’ve heard a lot of concerns from Members here, but with the Board of Governors of Aurora College it’s been great to dialogue with them from the committee stance and also when they came up to Inuvik to be able to sit with them in their meetings and get some concerns that we had from the region and also talk about how we utilize all three campuses and make sure that where we’re putting money where we’re getting the best bang for our dollar.

In your opening comments I’m glad to see that there are investments in income assistance. However, I think Mr. Bromley raises a good point that we have the productive choices. But what good are the productive choices doing if people are just going there to get a paper signed and to receive their income assistance? We’re keeping them in poverty, and as a result it’s putting us into a more fiscal restraint situation.

Good job on the minimum wage increase. I think there were a lot of people who appreciate that.

Early childhood development, there’s a lot of money going into training. However, if we could invest that money, the dollars into an Early Childhood Development diploma or certificate then we get legitimate certification for our early childhood programming staff and I think that’s where we need to look at Education Renewal and Innovation. That all started because of Members questioning where the department was going and seeing some of the challenges and barriers. As a result, we had to re-create our whole education system. It’s amazing to look at that and to look at all the statistics that we have, especially in the small communities. Good job to the department for responding to that and to the Members for asking the tough questions and being persistent to get those questions answered.

The Aboriginal School Achievement has been hugely discussed right from day one almost, and I know the ASA committee in Inuvik is wondering: okay, well, we’ve done all this work, we made these recommendations, now how do we implement this? Where’s the support? I know it does fall on the education authorities, but there has to be some push from the ministerial department to say this is what they’ve done. These are front-line workers that are making these recommendations. We need to support them financially or with the resources.

Our graduation rates increased. Good job. However, they’re still low, really low. It begs to ask about social passing. These individual education plans, how many people are graduating with that? I know we’ve got to open up the Education Act and make amendments to that so that people who are on IEPs do get the credentials so that they can get their diploma so they can get out into the workforce.

Another thing that’s been discussed and worked on is these wraparound services for at-risk children and families. I don’t need to get it now, but when we do meet with standing committee again I’d like to get an update on how well that’s working, whether it’s something that’s been successful and what barriers there are on that. I’d like to give, you know, good program with these three, the e-learning program, as well as, I mentioned here earlier today, the East Three gardening program. Something that we can address. Attendance, getting students engaged, building skills for the future and feeding them, healthy nutrition.

There’s a lot of good stuff that this department has done moving forward. I know I didn’t highlight all of them, but there are some small successes that we had in the past. However, there are still lots of challenges. I’ve got a whole other sheet here that I can discuss.

With the time allocated, I think that one thing that I mentioned last week was the Skills for Success strategy, and when I went to look for it online to see what updates there were, I found the labour force development symposium as well as the Labour Force Development Framework, which should be guiding us up until the year 2020, and yet we’re going to create a new action plan under Skills for Success when all the information is in there. There were 30 suggestions that were provided. I made this clear in the House last week. Yet, we’re going to spend I don’t know how many more dollars to do the regional engagements and then do the symposium here in Yellowknife again. That’s potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars when we could be taking some of those 30 suggestions, putting them into action, getting people ready for the workforce. But yet we’re consulting again and we’re bringing people to talk about it, talk about something we talked about four years ago or five years ago. It just doesn’t make sense to me and I think that that needs to be a priority looking at why do the same thing over that we’ve done in the past and not creating action on it.

The DEA funding, the high costs of doing business up in the Beaufort-Delta, travel, when they have board meetings, bringing them in. There is a lot of money that goes to travel. I think that needs to be addressed in terms of formula funding.

Attendance. Our attendance is still low. We need to find incentives. I know in Inuvik at the elementary school they have an incentive program that allows kids to come into school. I know the learning centre in Inuvik has an attendance incentive program to get kids into their seats so they can get educated. That’s the first step, is getting the kids in the seat.

Look at the successes that we have across the Northwest Territories and build on them, share them. Have a place where East Three can show people what they’re doing with e-learning and with this gardening program. I’m sure every community has a great program. I think in Providence they have the active living where they had people go to the gym in the morning, get ready for school, and it was successful. We need to find a baseline or a framework where we can share our successes.

As I said, I know that standing committee did put in a request to meet with the department on a more in-depth discussion on all these concerns and updates on everything that’s been discussed and implemented since the onset of this government. I really don’t need a response. The Minister can respond if he wants, but I know that committee is looking forward to meeting with the department and getting a more comprehensive update and what has the department done in what they’ve been promising us with action plans and with the Education Renewal Initiative and just moving forward. The OAG report has a lot of recommendations that we pushed in the House, made motions to, and we just want to see that it’s just not sending paperwork back and forth and that it’s time for action. With that, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. I’ll take that as comments. Next I have Mr. Nadli.

Michael Nadli

Deh Cho

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of comments. For the most part, I think education is, of course, a lifelong process. I’ve been hearing comments that as soon as perhaps we finish high school and then go on to university it ends. I just wanted to be clear that I believe that education is a lifelong process and you only stop learning when perhaps you take your last breath.

That’s a significant role that education plays in society, and especially here in the Northwest Territories. We’re challenged with some very fundamental challenges in terms of the statistics, in terms of population, the distinctions in terms of the non-Aboriginals, First Nations, and we have a very small population base in the communities as well. We’re very challenged, and so it’s integral and critical that education, this department, being the second largest department of the GNWT in terms of expenditures and revenues, undertakes a very, very clear business philosophy, and as we process clients through the department, whether it’s education, whether it’s the language initiatives, whether it’s income support, we process clients so that we treat them with dignity at the same time we at least embellish them and empower them with at least the tools to be successful. People standing in society that are very proud and have had a very remarkable experience of going through the department and coming out and feeling that, yes, I’ve been helped, I’ve been acknowledged, I’ve been validated, and I should be a very positive contributing member of society. That’s how people should feel when they go through their experience with the Department of Education.

That’s something, of course, I’m being presumptuous that it’s being dealt with. Of course, like in a large operation, you have your human resources, you have your systems in place, and of course you have your financial resources in place, and you’re trying to make the best use of it. In some respects, it could be limited, it could be a challenge that we’re trying to meet major initiatives head on, but sometimes we’re just challenged because there are other priorities that need our immediate attention. That’s just the challenge of operating such a large department.

The thing that I strongly view is that in examining and taking a look at our Northwest Territories, at the same time our small communities, we have a lot of social challenges. Colleagues just stated the idea of social passing. Of course, we have some very fundamental issues too like alcohol and drugs that play into being at least some barriers of people leading successful lives.

Education, in terms of ensuring that at the end of the process of university or whatever degree or diplomas that our people might receive is our best hope for the future. It’s our best hope for our youth so that they go through that experience of experiencing the role of getting to know the world and getting to know their limitations. At the same time, their potential of being very positive members of society, at least at the community level, and going forth. Being able to serve themselves and at the same time being able to play a role in the greater make-up of the family, plus the community and becoming very positive members of society. So that’s our best hope for the future. I’m always reminded periodically in some groups, education, it’s almost that you have to become two persons. You become Dene or First Nations and they also have to embrace the non-Aboriginal values too. So you almost have to become two persons.

In that perspective, too, I’m always reminded that some elders have always taken the view that we need to embrace education. It’s almost like our people now have to hold the pen and become very productive members of society so that we’re equal and on par with other groups throughout the world and that we can make advances in science, research and development. The sky is the limit and we begin perhaps branching out into space and that kind of stuff.

For the most part, I think this department plays a very big role in the community and it’s encouraging that there have been efforts to try to make this department very strong and, at the same time, responsive. There have been discussions in terms of the Education Renewal Initiative and fundamental in that there’s always the disparity between smaller communities, larger centres and larger big cities like Yellowknife. There’s always the stark statistics in terms of how our students in small communities compare to the larger centres. We need to narrow that gap. We need to ensure that our students at the community level have the resources and, at the same time, that they have the best teachers in place so that they’re in that support role.

Of course, the other thing I wanted to mention is the early childhood development. I understand there’s going to perhaps be a reprised version almost going back, but at the same time venturing forth. I hope we’ve heeded to our experience and trying to do things the right way and trying to make at least all sectors of society, the communities involved, parents, there’s the Aboriginal Head Start program, the schools, the district education authorities, we need to involve everyone to make it successful.

The other points that I wanted to also highlight is the idea that our language is always a concern and we need to closely monitor the initiatives that have gone forth. I know there has been some devolving of some responsibility to the regional Aboriginal First Nation groups, but at the same time, I think there needs to be close monitoring of ensuring that there is Aboriginal, at the very minimum, program initiatives going forth, but at the same time we’re ensuring that no language comes to the threshold of extinction. We always need to closely monitor that.

The other point I wanted to make is, of course, there’s always this idea that because we’re involved with language we receive funding from the Department of Heritage through the federal government. There are always initiatives that we could advance and one of them is, of course, local radio stations. We need to ensure that we continue our support. Some communities have advanced, very sophisticated operations. At the same time, there are still remaining challenges in terms of trying to equip each radio station with all the tools that they need to make them successful, at the same time ensuring that, through the airwaves, our language is heard throughout the community.

Those are just some comments that I wanted to close off with, but at the same time one thing that I really experience well and been a product of is summer camps. I mean, there have been discussions in terms of on-the-land initiatives and I think maybe in the short term of the summer the department could perhaps consider summer camps. The idea doesn’t necessarily have to be on the land, it could be an academic refresher or courses that the school offers for perhaps two weeks or maybe a month just to ensure that students that are behind are given an opportunity to catch up. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. We’ll give the Minister an opportunity to reply. Minister Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. It is very true that education, obviously, is a lifelong journey. It’s learning for life and when the Member talked about how we treat individuals, that we should be treating them with dignity, I fully support him on that level that we need to treat each other respectfully and with dignity as well. We’ve encountered that through the Income Security Program as an example that we’ve improved in so many ways of our professionals, how they interact with the public audience and vice versa. So we take that very serious.

Social challenges, obviously they’re always before us whether it be alcohol or drug involvement. This is an interdepartmental strategy. It’s not just my department. It deals with all other departments as well. I guess more specifically with Health and Social Services, Justice and so forth. So we have an integrated approach on dealing with issues that come to our attention. So it is a united approach when it comes to these matters.

Early childhood, I agree with the Member that we need to involve all parties, whether it be the Head Start, DECs, DEAs, community leadership. They need to be engaged and involved when there are changes within our programming. We work closely with the DEAs and DECs and Aboriginal leadership. So we’ll continue to push that forward.

Aboriginal language, obviously we don’t want it to be extinct. So this is an area that my department has been focusing on empowering on to the regions. We dished out around $3.4 or $3.5 million as a starting point to have Aboriginal leadership hire their own coordinator to deal with this particular area, language revitalization and cultural preservation.

We know we can do more in this area and it is the grassroots people that we’re working with at the community level. This is just a starting point that we’re allowing the Aboriginal governments the flexibility to make decisions on the funding that’s been allocated to them.

The local radio stations are challenged. We hear clearly from the Members that the languages must be heard throughout the Northwest Territories, nine Aboriginal languages, French and English, and obviously CKLB is being missed out in the communities. It has been a very popular program over the years and my department continuously supports our contribution. The challenge is the federal government at this point. But I did meet with the federal government back in January and I did talk about CKLB, NCS, how we can possibly take over part of their portion of funding, potentially. This is the preliminary discussions that we’ve had with them. So it is with the federal government. So we’re just waiting for them to make some sort of decision so I can move forward on this particular file. I also met with the NCS board chair just last week, and more specifically talking about CKLB, how can we improve in those areas. There’s been a lot of great feedback from the chair. We provided some options that we can possibly move forward while we’re waiting for the federal government. We’ve been in contact with CKLB administration on how we can best move forward and provide those options.

I’m a firm believer that CKLB should be back up and running because it is the voice of the North. We’ll do what we can as a department to push that forward with the federal government. Mahsi, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Committee, general comments.

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Detail.

Committee, are you prepared to commence detail?

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.

Thank you, committee. We’ll defer page 57 until consideration of all activity summaries. That being said, I’ll get committee to turn to page 58, revenue summary, information item. Are there any questions?

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.