Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I was asking the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment about upgrading, and stuff like that. I need to follow up with a couple more questions for the Minister. We have set up a meeting to go into the communities. Can the Minister make a commitment to be prepared and to have her staff prepared to discuss upgrading and the challenges they are facing? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going into the Nahendeh riding for a constituency tour, as long as the plans all follow through and we can get a double-engine plane. Anyone I hear at those meetings, I am willing to talk to. I am willing to listen to all of the concerns of the people, of whoever I meet with. That has just been my style. However, for me to make any commitments around how we are going to deal with upgrading or the community learning centres at that time would be inappropriate, because that is a process that has to be done within our polytechnic university as we move towards that. Yes, I will hear it, but no, I probably won't commit to anything at that time, unless they are easy commitments. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am not asking her for a commitment, but I am asking her to make sure that she has her staff there, the superintendent of schools, ECE, and a couple of other people there, to hear the concerns from people about the upgrading needed. Can she commit to having at least a couple of those people available to be part of the tour?
I can commit to having staff available from Education, Culture and Employment. I will check with the superintendent. I am not sure of his availability, so I can't stand here today and commit to a superintendent when I don't even know if he will be available.
The Minister talked about distance learning and the program that the department is using, and it is a great program. However, it is very much a peer setting. It is the top level, to get people into college or to university. Can the Minister advise: is the department looking at adding additional courses to the distance learning opportunity?
When I first took over Education, I was shocked that we didn't even offer the upper-level courses in all of the small communities. I was naive and made an assumption that education was accessible to all. I have since learned that that is not so.
At this point, we are just trying to get the Northern Distance Learning into all of the small communities. With the adding of the four that are coming up now, that will bring it up to 15. Those are for the upper level. Those are the grades that people cannot access right now, currently, in their communities, although we still have issues with other ones. At this point, until we can get that Northern Distance Learning into every small community to address those top levels, I am not willing to look at it. After that is done, I think it should be something that an MLA should question the Minister on.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Minister for that answer. Unfortunately, I'm asking the questions today, so I am not going to wait until tomorrow or until the future. I am asking about other courses, the expanding of the program right now that exists. Have you looked at that opportunity? Could you make a commitment to get the department to look, at least, that opportunity for expanding it to other courses, just not the peer courses? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Like I said now, with the adding of four new schools this coming year, that's only bringing us up to 15 schools, and then, next year, we'll be bringing it up to another five, so we can actually have 20 schools. I will put the offer out there to the department and ask them to consider it. I will not make it a full-blown research project with a "what we heard" document, an action plan, and a framework because I don't think we're at that stage yet, Mr. Speaker. I think we're still trying to implement the beginning intent of the programs before expanding it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
