Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of education. As to my colleague from Nunakput's concerns of teachers and travel, most of our teachers in the regional centres in our small communities are providing what I feel is an essential service to our children. What is the plan for approving travel this spring break, since it was such a hot topic during Christmas? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The plan for spring break is going to be very similar to the plan for Christmas. Thank you.
We know that the CPHO has said, when we question whether the vaccine is going to loosen or take the border controls away, that she is not commenting that far. Has the department started consulting with the regional school boards or surveying if we will have a large amount of vacancies in September due to some of them not being able to travel for December and for their spring break? As we know, a lot of the teachers in our communities leave the summer and go back home to their families throughout Canada.
COVID has really changed a lot of things, but there are few who have been upended as much as teachers and students. There are things like the tourist industry, but schools across the world have been feeling this. I understand and I appreciate the sacrifice that teachers are making because not everyone is from here. I'm lucky that my family is in the territory. I don't have to go outside of the territory to see them, but that's not the case for everyone. Most of our teachers are from outside of the territory. A lot of them are young, and this could be their first time really away from their family. It is a big sacrifice, and I appreciate that.
The territory always loses teachers. It's tough to get teachers here, and it's often difficult to keep them. It's a different way of life, especially if you're used to a big city. You come up, and you're living in small communities. It can be difficult, and the weather, a lot of different factors. We often lose teachers at Christmas. Sometimes teachers just don't come back after the Christmas break, and often teachers don't come back after a couple of years. We fully expect that there will be turnover, as there always is, and we don't have any hard numbers at this point about how many teachers will not be returning. I have heard anecdotally that teachers have said that they won't be, but I can't point to any statistics. However, I would assume that it might be a higher number than normal.
One of the questions that I have for the Minister is: Trying to plan for the future, we don't want to plan in August or in July or June. If we do have a low uptake of teachers who are coming into the territory or applying for jobs or recruiting because of all of our restrictions, say if our border restrictions are still in place, is there a possibility that we will get more e-learning or Northern Distance Learning-type classrooms for some of our kids that could potentially have a teacher but have the kids in the classroom and the teacher may be on the screen with some support?
The last thing we want to do is move toward more distance learning. Our goal is to fully staff all the schools with all the teachers and have in-person instruction. We've been lucky, more so than the rest of Canada, more so than many places in the world, that we've been able to have so much face-to-face learning, and we want to keep that going. Staffing has already started for the upcoming year, and so hopefully we're making these moves early so that we can attract more teachers. There is a lot of planning that has to be done. Everyone who is involved in education, the teachers' association, the school boards, are all aware that this is a concern. It has been brought to my attention, and I take it seriously. I have these discussions with the department, but our hope is that we are going to continue to be able to attract teaches to the territory.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Monfwi.
