Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I am going to again talk about support for truancy in our schools. Yesterday I spoke about the lack of tools available to our schools in dealing with that truancy issue. Minister Dent then proceeded to list off all the various methods used by different schools and education authorities to deal with truancy.

What was made clear by his response is that there is no clear territorial legislative, regulatory or policy base in dealing with truancy other than the fine that we never use. Every educational jurisdiction is free to deal with this issue of truancy how they see fit. The Minister was quite emphatic that the fault for a lot of the skipping students lies with the parents. I truly can’t dispute that some of the responsibility does lie there. But what I will dispute, Mr. Speaker, is that the lack of parental responsibility somehow absolves his department from having any issue in dealing with this at all. So, Mr. Speaker, I totally do not accept Minister Dent absolving himself of that responsibility.

I have spoken to educators who follow up on student absences. In some cases they tell me once the parents realize the schools are phoning, they just stop answering the phone. So, Mr. Speaker, educators also tell me that health and social service authorities refuse to get involved with truancy cases because they say or they believe that they are being downloaded that responsibility. They don’t want it at all.

Mr. Speaker, if I may mention, CTV News did a report on truancy titled, “One in Four Canadian Students Misses Classes Regularly.” During the report, Doug Willms, who wrote it, stated, and I quote, “I think truancy really represents a boredom factor, an apathy factor, and we really need to pay attention to that.” He further goes on to say, “We ought to take these results very serious. They are associated with a number of social issues.” The article goes on to talk about the rates in Canada where a lot of students miss one in six days or more a year. It ranks the NWT second to Newfoundland at 59 percent of the worst rates in absentee.

Mr. Speaker, finally on this issue of the article by Mr. Willms, he also says, “Canada, on a global level, is tied with Iceland and recognizes one of the worst countries in the developing world for truancy.” So, Mr. Speaker, the Department of Health and Social Services doesn’t care. The tone of the response, as I understood the Minister to say yesterday, didn’t sound like he cared either. Someone needs to care. Mr. Speaker, at this time, may I seek unanimous consent to conclude my Member’s statement?

Speaker: MR. SPEAKER

The Member is seeking unanimous consent to conclude his statement. Are there any nays? There are no nays. You may conclude your statement, Mr. Hawkins.

Robert Hawkins

Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. Especially, thank you, Mr. Dent.

---Laughter

Mr. Speaker, I really want to see the department show initiative and take care and demonstrate that they care. We need to start thinking broadly, not blaming families on this issue for their kids not attending classes. We need to start thinking out of the box. Yes, parents do play a role in this issue, but the department needs to play a leading role in new initiatives to support our DEAs on this problem. Approaches we could consider are things like community liaison social workers in each district education authority. We could put one in every authority. In most cases, these truancies deal with social envelope obstacles which a social worker could help the schools.

So, Mr. Speaker, in closing, block funding is very prescriptive, and it doesn’t allow a lot of movements for these school boards to deal with these issues of truancies, so we need intervention at the highest level, such as the ministry. As I said yesterday, and I am going to close with it again, truancy is a symptom, and it could be blamed on a thousand reasons. We need to owe it to ourselves and to these students to take an interest and to find out why they do not attend school. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause