R.J. Simpson

ECE is partnering with three regional Indigenous governments, and we are piloting a program called the NWT Indigenous Languages Mentor Apprenticeship Program, and there are approximately 60 participants in the program right now. Now, this program pairs a fluent Indigenous speaker with an Indigenous language learner through language immersion, and the goal is to have apprentices increase their fluency and confidence in speaking and understanding the languages, with the ultimate goal of becoming fluent enough that they can then become teachers. Lastly, ECE is partnering with post-secondary...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department, in recent years especially, has really been doing quite a bit in this area. Since 2018-2019, ECE has partnered with the University of Alberta's Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute to deliver Indigenous language programs to community members. Approximately 130 participants have been involved in the NWT-sponsored program. Since 2018, ECE has awarded 29 Indigenous language revitalization scholarships, each worth $5,000, to support NWT students registered in an accredited post-secondary program with a focus on language...

The Member is referring to the academic freedom that universities have. Of course, Aurora College is not yet a university. It doesn't participate in the type of research that necessitates that type of academic freedom, necessarily, but I can assure the Member that the foundational review recommended developing an arm's-length body. The government response agreed that we need to develop an arm's-length body, and I personally can assure the Member that I am not going to preside over the creation of something similar to what we had. I am not going to repeat the mistakes of the past. When we are...

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.

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...

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...

There are two parts to the question: will the Minster commit to delivering on the ERI, and will the departmental staff go into all the small communities? The original ERI framework had a lot of big goals in there. I actually respect that document quite a bit because it says, "This is what we are going to try. We might not try them all. We are going to try them, and we will see if they work." They threw ideas out there.

It is a great document, and a lot of good things have come out of that. We have northern distance learning. There are elders in school. There are all sorts of these things that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The transformation of Aurora College into a polytechnic university is a priority of this Legislative Assembly, and I am pleased to say that we continue to make progress. To be successful, we must focus investments in programs and services that lead to better education and employment outcomes for our residents, including through our post-secondary education system.

Mr. Speaker, success requires the right changes, in the right order, at the right time. Following from the government response to the Aurora College foundational review, one of those changes has been the recent...

Thank you. I look forward to seeing if that happens, but it's a little strange, I guess, that, after one Assembly, we give this increase. Usually, you know, if we're budgeting, you might have to have a few years' overages before you work that into the base, so I look forward to seeing the work that this committee does in this Assembly. Thank you.

No, I am brand new in the job, and I plan on reviewing all the budgets that ECE has, to make sure that we are doing things properly.

ECE and YK1 have also been in talks about maintenance plans. The Department has offered to assist YK1. You know, we have the Department of Infrastructure here that specializes in this kind of stuff, and so the GNWT is offering assistance to help develop a maintenance plan so that some of these maintenance costs can be dealt with in a more timely fashion perhaps, or at least there could be a plan in place to avoid some of these emergency expenditures like the...