Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. This question is directed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I spoke a little bit about budget surpluses in my Member's statement, and my question is: in the spirit of getting our district education authorities more budget autonomy, will the Minister commit to let any DEA surpluses in our riding to roll over this year? Mahsi cho.
Thank you, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Member bringing this up. It's good to get this type of information out to the public. I know that, when I was a Regular Member, and even now as a Minister, there seems to be difficulty communicating with the people on the ground, with the boards, about the roles and responsibilities and the rights of education authorities.
The policy that the Member is referencing was enacted to ensure that money that is provided by this Assembly for education is spent on education, and it allows for surplus carryover that is either 7 percent of audited revenue or $250,000, whichever is greater. If this amount is exceeded, the education body has to put forward a plan on how they are going to reduce that, and that plan comes to me.
I want to let the Minister know that I am very flexible in how I am going to administer this. If there is a real need for an education authority to set aside money in order to do something like purchase school buses, then I will have that conversation. They can write to myself, write to the department, and we can begin that process. We don't really claw money back. There has never been a situation where ECE has decided we are going to take money back. Every plan has been approved so far. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I don't know if there is any foreshadowing here, but did I just get a promotion to Minister? No? I just want to make sure. Thank you to the Minister for his response. I just want to make sure that there is more communication as well, and to have more meetings with our DEAs, just to make sure there is the open line communication, to make sure that I don't have to come back and ask these questions, and to work as a team.
My next question: would the Minister be open to working with our DEAs to grant their wishes and find ways to keep their surpluses?
I thank my colleague. That's why I try and say "colleague" all the time because we're all equal here. There are no promotions. We are all here to represent the public. I am happy to work with the education authorities to find ways to ensure that they can use their funds to deliver education in the best possible way. We also have to look at the fact that the funding from ECE is provided to the education council, and the education council is the one that then distributes it to the education authorities.
There is another level here that we have to look at, and perhaps the way that it's distributed by the education council leaves some authorities with more funding than others. It is not so black and white. Like I said, I am happy to have those conversations and to the Member's points, or to my colleague's points, I am trying to do a better job of communicating directly with the DEAs.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.
