Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement I talked about a couple of possibilities that I have been thinking about for post-secondary education in the NWT. I recognize that one of the ideas that I have around turning the Stanton Hospital into a school has a lot of logistics to it, and it would take a full department or several departments to work on it, but I would like to ask the Minister of Education questions on what is possible in Fort Smith.
In the foundational review, it was contemplated to move a lot of the programs out of Fort Smith. I would like to ask the Minister if she could start to look at the possibility of changing some of the programs from what currently exists to programs for the students who will be studying environment and conservation programs, I suppose. Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I would like to clarify that at no time was it my intention to move programs out of Fort Smith. My vision is to actually expand and strengthen programs in all campuses. It is not about one community or another.
I do want to also talk about the idea of ENR and what the Member had talked about. Yes, that is part of our visioning exercise that we need to do, is going throughout the territory and looking at the strengths that we have to offer and getting that from all of the communities, all of the people, so that when people identify one of the strengths, ENR, I see, is one of our strengths. Then, from that, we work on the visioning exercise for the college to be able to actualize the territorial vision. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I mentioned the investment that the federal government will be making in conservation, and I agree with the Minister that ENRTP program is a good program and produces lots of good officers that are valuable to the communities.
We also have other areas of land that need protection, with some of the work that we are doing in this House about improving some legislation for protected areas. I would like to ask the Minister if the Minister could start working with Indigenous governments to maybe look at the Indigenous guardianship programs, the Canadian Rangers, or even park officers, for that matter, where Fort Smith sits at the edge of probably the biggest national park in the country, and there are a lot of park officers there that could maybe get educated in Fort Smith. I would like to ask the Minister if she could look at the people involved in all of those areas, work with the people involved in all of those areas.
Yes, it is definitely important. This is a territory-wide issue. Our future for post-secondary is bigger than the people in this House, so it is important that we work with all levels of government, our municipal governments and our Aboriginal governments, for two reasons: to find out how we can best support the students; and the second one is to look at our vision and look at the strengths and identify areas that we can grow on. So, yes, I am seeing that part of the vision exercise is that we would be consulting with Indigenous governments to see what their vision is, as well.
Mr. Speaker, staying in the area of education, but not something that I mentioned in my Member's statement, is the research centre in Inuvik that's also part of Aurora College. I'd like to ask the Minister if she would look at what is possible for research. It appears as though Inuvik is blessed with probably the best fibre links, the best Internet connections in the world, and there's a research centre there. I'd like to ask the Minister if her department could work with the research centre to see how they could expand that to increase the studies and make Inuvik Aurora College into a world-class research institution.
I do have to say I really appreciate the questions today because the MLA has actually pointed out a lot of the vision things, a lot of our strengths, a lot of the areas that we need to work with. The reason that I'm really promoting to move into a polytechnic university is because that research money is leaving the Northwest Territories. We have hundreds of universities coming across the world up to Inuvik to study our issues, and we're not tapping into that money because we're still a college.
So moving into a polytechnic university will allow us to not only access that money, but it keeps the knowledge in the Northwest Territories. It has a lot of potential, and I am certainly going to expand on that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Lastly, I guess, is the more difficult of all of the tasks that I think we should be working on in post-secondary education, and that is the nursing school in Yellowknife, here, for the old Stanton. I realize that the Department of Health has other uses for that, but I still feel that there's room for that place to become a good nursing school for homecare, that has so much potential for our communities and our elders. It is also a great way to keep the elders in their home as long as possible and save a lot of money in the system by not having them go into long-term care. So I'd like to ask the Minister if she would continue to work with the Department of Health and Social Services to see what's possible there.
Currently, our nursing students do actually utilize the Stanton Hospital for their practicums. That is very important. Hands-on learning is critical within any university, certificate, diploma, or degree programming, so we will continue to work with Health and Social Services on utilizing that. I do note I hear the Member who is saying: can we make the school there? That, I cannot promise. What I can say is that the campus in Yellowknife has outgrown its current headquarters, and that has to be looked at. At this point, I can't say whether it would be part of the old Stanton Hospital or if it would be a new building, but what I can promise is that we will continue to work with Health and Social Services to make sure that we have the best practicum opportunities possible for our students. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
