Quyanainni, Mr. Speaker. Earlier, I spoke about residential schools and reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. My question is: have you implemented mandatory training for teachers and Education, Culture, and Employment staff on residential schools?
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture, and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Member's statement that the Member brought forward on residential school training. As residential schools have impacted people in every community in the Northwest Territories, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission brought these issues forward to all Canadians, as well as to people of the Northwest Territories. Mandatory training has been brought forward in a variety of ways. We have developed, in partnership with Nunavut, a residential school curriculum through our Northern Studies program. We have also introduced mandatory training to all teachers in the Northwest Territories, kindergarten to grade 12, and our goal is to have every teacher who teaches in the Northwest Territories take that awareness training. We have made this residential school training available to all Education, Culture and Employment, and we have made it mandatory for all Education, Culture and Employment employees to take it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
My question is: is there a plan to expand the training to other interested groups?
As I mentioned, with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission bringing forth the recommendations, when we looked at them, we found out we were already doing a lot of this work throughout the Northwest Territories. With that said, we are offering some of this training to other jurisdictions throughout the North and throughout Canada. I myself participated in the training. We had participants from Nunavut, Yukon, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and we are also looking at getting federal ministers who are also interested in taking some of this residential school training. Our goal is to ensure that anybody that does work here in the North is aware of the impact that residential schools had on our people, our families, and our communities.
My question is: could this training be made available to all Members of the Legislative Assembly?
As leaders for the Northwest Territories, leaders in our communities, and Members who make decisions for people throughout the Northwest Territories, you heard earlier of some of the social implications that we see in our small communities. I would be more than happy to work with Members to have all Members participate in this residential school training.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.
