Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, as promised, case number two of Education, Culture and Employment’s Student Financial Assistance policies that don’t work as they should.
This problem is the same problem that Mr. Bouchard was speaking about earlier, and it’s the denial of an NWT resident for student financial assistance funding. The student who attended all of her primary and elementary schooling in the NWT has been out of the territory caring for an elderly relative, all the while filing taxes in the NWT as an NWT resident. She has now returned to the NWT, intending to take a nursing program at Aurora College, and has been denied student financial assistance funding due to the rigid application of the residency requirement.
“We can’t accept your application,” she was told. The policy says you have to be out of any post-secondary school and live in the NWT for a year before you can get funding. No exceptions.
If we’re trying to drive residents away, this seems to be a pretty good way to do it. This logic, like the logic I mentioned yesterday, also defies my understanding. In a territory where it is a declared priority of government to add residents to our population – 2000 in five years is the goal – we are refusing to make it easy to repatriate someone who wants to come home, who wants to live in the North, who has been schooled here.
We will help with the education of a Southerner who has been here just a year but deny the Northerner who grew up here, it seems. Why do we insist NWT residents have to be out of any post-secondary school for a year before we will fund them? What’s the rationale for that part of the policy?
I offered a solution to yesterday’s problem. Well, here’s a solution for today’s problem as well: amend the policy. Allow a student who’s received all of their schooling in the NWT to re-establish their residency by living here for a more reasonable length of time, like three months instead of 12 months.
Both of these issues, these undesirable endings described today and yesterday, didn’t have to happen. We need to grant a flexibility to the student financial assistance staff making funding decisions so students in an exigent situation can be accommodated and supported to advance both their education and our territory. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
