R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Member for the questions. The skilled trades and technology is an area of specialization, so it's not a program; it is one of the four areas that the college is going to focus on initially. The reason to start there is, first of all, it will be a polytechnic and that is what polytechnics do, but also those are a lot of the things that the college does right now and does well. Initially, it's going to be building on those. As we move to become a polytechnic university, there will be a research component. We have recently added a position of applied...

Thank you. I believe that is best practice. I think there are maybe two jurisdictions in Canada in which it's the Minister who makes these types of decisions. There is more to this than just reading a briefing note and making a decision, and that's what Ministers are good at. There is case law that has to be looked at; there is substantial case law around provisions like this in Canada. Perhaps I could ask Ms. Mathisen to explain because I saw what happened during the pandemic when the employment standards officers had to make decisions. I saw the work that went into making those decisions and...

I think he's seeking the opinion of the law clerk.

No, that is not my interpretation. This isn't an application process whereby a company thinks that perhaps they can lay off employees sooner by applying to the government. That is not how this works, at all. Employers will provide notice of group termination, and if they haven't provided adequate group termination, under the current act, they are in violation of the act. What this amendment would do would be to allow the government, the employment standards officer, to look at the situation surrounding that termination and determine whether or not the employer met all of the criteria in the...

Thank you. I would like to hand this to Ms. Mathisen. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to be clear, I wouldn't change the time all willy-nilly with this "blank cheque," as the Member calls it. It's not like I want to leave work early, so I'm going to change the time so now it's time to go home. The only prudent thing to do, really, is to ensure that we are aligned with Alberta. That being said, there is a requirement in this bill for some sort of a public consultation. I envision that as an email address that the public can send their concerns to. Thank you.

We cannot do this alone. We are so early on in this, we have not reached out to the education bodies yet, to the Indigenous bodies, anything like that, so we are starting that process now. We have done a lot of the leg work, but there is still much more to do. The decision would come in the summer at the earliest, and if we were to adopt a new curriculum, it would not be rolling out until 2022. Thank you.

Yes. If there's a witness in that room, I'd like to bring them into the Chamber.

As I stated, we are always looking at our curriculum, always looking at what is new. There're people in the department who, this is their job. They focus on curriculum. As I said, given the Office of the Auditor General results as well as our own results as well as the fact that we know we need to do better, we wanted to look and see if, perhaps, adjusting our curriculum is a way to do that. There're a lot of options. Looking forward, we could stay with Alberta's new curriculum. We could create a partnership with another jurisdiction. We could, perhaps, use K to eight of one jurisdiction and...

Thank you. I'd like to introduce Matthew Yap, superintendent of securities, and Cherie Jarock, legislative counsel, and they would be happy to answer any questions Members may have about this topic. Thank you.