Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Every year the Government of the Northwest Territories, through EC&E, helps many students through university. During the course of the four years at university the students, as we all know, have a habit of gathering a lot of belongings. We pay their way to and from school. They come back after they’re done university, and they provide return of service.
However, Mr. Speaker, there is a gap, as we do not assist them in shipping their items back home. Many of them would like to bring their items back home after four years of gathering them. They are put in a position where they have to either sell or ship the items home at their own cost.
I bring this issue forward after hearing the story of a student who’d just completed four years of university and was coming back up North to work. She wanted to bring all her furnishings back home, yet after making some inquiries was told that she couldn’t. They looked into it, and they decided, “Yes, we will assist you,” but by then it was too late. She had sold most of her belongings. A couple of more students may be finished this year. They have similar concerns, and I’ve heard from them.
Mr. Speaker, we bring a lot of new people in from down South to work up North, and we pay for shipping everything they have up here. Then when they finish here — sometimes it’s not very long — we pay to ship their items back to wherever it is they’re from. The students are Northerners: northern born, northern raised for the most part. They’re going to spend their entire career working in the North because it’s their home, and sometimes I think we send them the wrong message. In our attempt to attract and recruit so many new hires from down South, I think we unintentionally overlook or take our own for granted.
Mr. Speaker, it’s a matter of a slight policy change. If we as an Assembly, or the department itself, have the authority to make that policy change, then I think that is something that should be done without question. If it’s something that they’ve overlooked, I think they should deal with it so we do not have to have students who spend four years at university having to worry about what they’re going to do with everything they’ve gathered over the course of four years.
I’ll have questions for the Minister of EC&E at the appropriate time.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
