Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My honourable friend the Member for Yellowknife Centre was asking the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment about the social work program. This program has long been a subject of interest of this Assembly. Without any student intake, it's currently withering on the vine, and now we hear we have even more delays, which is conveniently linked to my statement earlier today. So I will ask the Minister from the Member for Kam Lake: is this program going to be allowed to wither on the vine, or are we going to set new direction to allow intake until the full transformation of Aurora College can take place? Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have made a commitment and I will stand by my commitment that I am not willing to let Aurora College stay status quo. There are issues that need to be addressed within our post-secondary education, and my commitment is to making sure that we have the best quality post-secondary and secondary and elementary education for our students as possible.
So the social work program as it is, could the Minister make the improvements or some of the improvements that are indicated in that review, which is now public information? Could the Minister implement some of those recommendations now, improve the program and get it working the way it should to fill the much-needed gap in social workers, that are indicated in the government's own Skills 4 Success strategy?
No, the Minister cannot make those changes immediately. There are significant changes to be made. One is deciding where we want the transfer of credits to go or if it wants to be stand-alone. That is one issue. The other issue is it talks about having third- and fourth-year courses in the first year of a student attending university. That is not okay. That sets up our students to fail. That needs to be changed, and it talks about how to change that, combining it with other general arts throughout the other programs, but that has to be negotiated. This is not something that you just automatically do. So all of the changes need time. The internal review done on the social work program says develop a plan. I picked that up, and I am committed to making sure that we do a planned process that ensures that we have quality programming for our students. As said over and over, I am all about quality programming.
I appreciate that there are areas that can improve and, if the Minister is certain that these opportunities cannot be made, then I will ask this. Everything hinges on the ADM, this new ADM position that is out for hire. When is the Minister going to have that position in place so we can start making progress on Aurora College?
The competition is now open. It's going across Canada. It closes, I believe, at the end of this month. At that point, we will be conducting the interview process, and we are presuming that person will be hired by the end of this calendar year.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If the department cannot succeed in hiring this position, what is the Minister's backup plan? Are we still going to move ahead with changes, or does everything stall until we can fill that position? Thank you.
I would be shocked if we did not fill the position. We have had applicants from across Canada apply, and I have even gotten three that came across my desk as a Minister, so I am not even sure why that would not happen, that it would not be done.
As the Member had spoken before, I do not know if it was a hockey puck or a football, but this is not a game, Mr. Speaker. This is about building a strong foundation. We need to do things in proper time. We need strong leadership to guide this forward. It is not appropriate that a Minister who does not have the expertise in bringing forward post-secondary education would be designing what that post-secondary would look like. My degree is in social work. It is not on running post-secondary education. I need the expertise. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
