R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the Member for bringing this to the House's attention and thank all of the teachers that the Member mentioned. If you look at the list, most of those names have over 20 years of experience; some have 30; some have 40. They are nearing retirement, and ECE and the education bodies are very concerned about the fact that there are not enough fluent speakers to replace these teachers. The department can't address this issue alone, and it is undertaking a concerted effort to begin working with Indigenous governments to address the issue.

In 2018, the NWT...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There was a foundational review of Aurora College in the last Assembly. There was a government response to that foundational review, to the recommendations of it. That foundational review stated that we should just get rid of the president altogether and have a bureaucratic head of the college. What we have chosen to do is keep the president and have the associate deputy minister position so that there is a bit more continuity.

Right now, we believe that this is essential to ensure that both the college and the transformation team are working towards the same goal. If we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our greatest northern resource is our people, and it is our responsibility to invest in and take steps to ensure their health and well-being.

On January 1, 2020, Northwest Territories residents will be able to access new and enhanced types of employment leave to protect their jobs when faced with important or challenging moments in life.

These challenges align with the Government of Canada's amendments to the Employment Insurance program and the Canada Labour Code and allow the Northwest Territories to remain competitive with other jurisdictions by offering employees the...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following three documents. "Aurora College Corporate Plan 2019-2020"; "Aurora College Annual report 2018-2019"; and "2018-2019 Annual Report on Official Languages." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

ECE provides funding to all the education bodies in the Northwest Territories based on the School Funding Framework, and that, essentially, is based on the number of students who are enrolled. Then once the regional education body receives that funding, it allocates it to individual schools. It is the principals of those schools who determine how that funding is best used. When there are declining enrollments, that means there is less money. That means there are fewer teachers.

This is something that was discussed at length in the last Assembly, and I know that there were comments made that we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can inform the Member, my colleague, that the education renewal and innovation framework was shared widely with all the education bodies back in 2013 when it was first released. The Member referenced a three-year action plan in his statement. I am not sure if that was. It is my assumption it was, but I can't say for sure. I can find out.

However, this leads me to something else that I have been discovering since I took this portfolio. The communication between the department and the education bodies, the boards themselves and the regional councils, needs to be improved...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We are dealing with the indemnity payable to officeholders, and I see that there is a bit of a difference here. The rules and procedures committee was identified in the current act as receiving a lesser indemnity than the other committee chairs. My understanding is that is because, traditionally, there were only about 12 or 13 meetings an Assembly for the rules committee. I understand that, in the last Assembly, that number has increased. Do we expect these numbers to increase, the workload to increase, to be similar to the other committees? Is that why this increase is...

Even though YK1 owns the infrastructure, the GNWT is responsible for new schools and major retrofits, so, if there is something that can't be covered with the $900,000 capital surplus, like a brand new school, that is what the GNWT covers.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Unlike most jurisdictions in the Northwest Territories, most communities, the school infrastructure of YK1 is owned by YK1, for the most part. As such, it is not the GNWT that provides maintenance; it is actually YK1. The GNWT does provide a maintenance budget. I believe it is $1.4 million annually to YK1 to perform this type of maintenance.

Sometimes, when ECE has extra money in its budget, in its capital budget, it will provide that to cover some of these costs, but at this time ECE doesn't have that extra money in its capital budget and the YK1 actually has a surplus...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank my colleague for his earlier statement, as well as the other colleague from the Deh Cho. I appreciate these conversations coming to light. We need to talk about them if we want to make changes.

The Member is right. Small communities have lower graduation rates. They have lower attendance rates. One of the priorities of this Assembly is to increase student education outcomes to the rest of Canada. In some regional centres and in Yellowknife, the student outcomes are nearly the same as the rest of Canada, so it really is the small communities, in a lot of...