Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement I talked about culture and education. I would like to ask the Minister of Education how many dollars are going into my region, the Sahtu region, into the educational system in terms of teaching and providing cultural opportunities for our children.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. We do provide various program dollars to the community to promote and enhance our language and our culture, our special way of life, in all regions and in all the schools that we provide funding to. We do get certain funding from the federal government as well. And there is a $1.9 million pot of funding we provide towards that program.
I could provide that detailed information to the Member as to the Sahtu region — specific details of what kind of program dollars they are getting in the riding. Mahsi.
I look forward to the information the Minister is going to provide to me and possibly the other Members of the House in terms of the funding that is being provided to the communities and our region.
I’ll ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment: in terms of the authority over cultural programs being implemented into our communities, would the Minister commit to sitting down and talking to the education board to look at how to increase cultural programs into the Sahtu community in order to have a balance of academic and cultural teaching?
Certainly there are always ways of improving certain programs or enhancing certain programs. I’m looking forward to the discussion that will take place within the region of Sahtu and to working with the local DEA and also the regional educational council representatives. They are the ones we contribute the program dollars to, to deliver the school programs.
I will be more than happy to meet with the Member and also his representatives to deal with this particular item. If there needs to be improvement, it will be Northwest Territories–wide, so we can certainly talk further on that. Mahsi.
Again, I certainly appreciate the Minister making efforts to come into Sahtu and meet with the people there, with the appropriate boards and authorities.
Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Minister if he would consider something like they do in Russia with their education programs. In the mornings they have a culture program, just for the morning. They have dancing; they have languages. In the afternoon they provide the academic structure. I would ask the Minister if that type of consideration could be given to the majority of the people in my region, who are average people who should be looking at how we involve the teachers, parents and the elders in teaching that type of culture.
That can be one of our topics of discussion when we are meeting with the various parties within the Sahtu region. We do have an integrated cultural and language curriculum in the schools as well. We can talk further on that.
I will bring my department in to discuss what we currently deliver in the schools in the 33 communities we serve. The programs are outlined in all the communities, so we will discuss further where we need to improve in certain areas. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our educational boards are doing very well with the limited dollars we have. We are following a national accreditation in terms of what we need to do to pass our students to the next grade.
I feel that within our own schools we are excluding certain professors in our schools, such as the elders. The elders have a wealth of knowledge, yet when we try to get them in there, they’re challenged because of the income. They get dinged by social security, by the federal government. They want to come in, but if they do come in, their pension cheque is going to go down, so it hinders them.
I want to ask the Minister: would he be able to take his leadership within his department, work with the other Cabinet Ministers? We’ve got to have these professors, these elders, in our schools. We have got to teach our younger children, because they are missing that part of their education. We don’t have them. We have people coming from outside who don’t have that knowledge of our community and our language and our culture. We’ve got to have the elders in our schools. If we don’t, Mr. Speaker, that’s a crying shame today.
I certainly agree with the Member as to the value and the wisdom that elders bring to the school system and also to the community. We must cherish that and also work with that. We as a department have been dealing with this particular issue, because it’s not only in the Sahtu region but Northwest Territories–wide that schools would like to fully utilize elders’ services.
They are penalized from their pension as well when they get honorarium cheques or casual paycheques. We are dealing with that issue right now. We are talking about options in different scenarios as to how we can deliver an effective program where they don’t get penalized. We will continue to work with that, Mr. Speaker. I will continue to work with the Member and also the members of the standing committee to improve in this area.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
