R.J. Simpson

I am going to try to make it to as many schools as I can. I believe we have 49. I'm going to see what I can do this Assembly. Fort Resolution is right near Hay River, so that will be an easy one. My new deputy minister, who I am lucky to have, is a former principal. One of the first things she did is told me about what a big impression it makes on students when the Minister comes to their school and engages them, and it got me excited about it. I look forward to it. I look forward to getting to some of the places where I don't normally get to go, places like Lutselk'e. I can't make any...

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...

As the Minister of Education, I plan to travel to lots of different schools, and, of course, I plan to travel to the college. I am not sure what the schedule is for the new year. It has been relatively busy. It is hard to find a free moment. At some point in the new year, at some point, I'm sure, in the first part of next year, I will be travelling to Fort Smith, and I will be having discussions with staff.

I am always open to sitting down with the Member, as well, and having conversations. The Members are the voices of their communities, and I want to hear from the Member about what she has to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank my colleague for bringing this forward. I completely understand the concerns. We had a foundational review, and the third party who did the review of the College suggested moving the headquarters to Yellowknife, and so I understand why there was this concern coming out of Fort Smith.

You know, Fort Smith is the headquarters, as they say. It is the home to the corporate services of Aurora College. I believe there are 40 jobs in corporate services. There has never been a plan to move that out of Fort Smith. There is not a plan now to move it out of Fort...

I know there is an internship program that the GNWT had through the Department of Finance, I believe, but the Member is right. We need to do more, I think.

One of the first things I talked about when I got this portfolio was the need to be better communicators and do a better job promoting education and promoting the North as a place to come back to. We need to reach out to our students. We do that through Student Financial Assistance. They have a great advertising program. When I was in school, I always knew when my payments were supposed to come and when my application was supposed to be in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I want to thank my colleague for the question. I would also like to congratulate, myself, Ms. Doreen Arrowmaker for her achievement of achieving a master's degree. You know, with this portfolio, that's the goal, to get our residents educated.

The Member brings up a good point: are we keeping track of who is educated? If we don't know, how do we bring them back here? We do know what programs our residents are taking, if they are receiving SFA. We know what institutions they are attending. Outside of that, we don't have that ability. If someone just goes off to school...