Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. As I mentioned in my Member's statement, there is great potential for a polytechnic university to enhance our educational system, our economy, and our society in general.
Mr. Speaker, Arctic research and knowledge has an increasing profile in Canada and around the world, and in fact, last year, the federal government and Government of Quebec announced more than $53 million in funding for a new campus of the Institut nordique du Québec that will have a focus on Arctic research. I would like to ask the Minister: has the Minister begun any, call it, lobbying to the federal government for support for the development of the polytechnic university? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As for the term "lobbying," direct lobbying to build our polytechnic university, at this point, we have not. I know that the federal government is working with us. They just gave us $4 million, I believe, for the Centre for Mining and Industry in Fort Smith that was recently opened, which I attended just a couple of months ago. Word on the street is that they are actually looking at post-secondary universities in the north all over, so we are trying to get in on that team to find out what they are doing and what their interests are. Once we have an implementation plan developed and we have decided what types of canvas, student supports, et cetera, that we need, at that point, when we have a concrete ask, we will be approaching the federal government with an ask.
I'm very hopeful. I know that they are looking at us, and I also know that they have supported not only Quebec, but also the Yukon, with their post-secondary. We're in line. We're watching them closely, and we're hoping they're listening today.
Thank you to the Minister for that update. I appreciate that it is an election year, and so I would ask that the Minister and the government keep the pressure on.
In February, the Minister updated the Assembly on post-secondary development, referring particularly to a public consultation process to gather input of the needs of our post-secondary system and the establishment of the Public Advisory Board. I'd like to ask the Minister: can the Minister update the Assembly on progress in these areas?
Yes. Actually, we're going to be presenting to standing committee as well on June 5th, so I'm going to give a little bit of heads up to what we're presenting on June 5th, I suppose. We've completed the survey. We've gone across the Northwest Territories. We've reached actually almost 750 surveys. I don't have the number on hand. We'll present it to standing committee. We did a real focus on youth, 29 and under, which I'm very happy to report that we've actually been very successful in getting those voices. With that, we're still breaking down what the vision will be. That process is still ongoing. Not only the vision, but the goals which have become our framework. We're doing that process.
The advisory council is really important. That will actually support the associate deputy minister of post-secondary renewal to define where he's going with the courses, and also to do the evaluation. I know that the associate deputy minister has already approached some universities and colleges throughout Canada. We're really looking for people with a strength in polytechnic to actually help us mentor us through, and we're developing. We're just doing a draft terms of reference for the advisory committee that will be shared once we're finalized with standing committee, and then put out, but we're in the process of doing that currently.
Thank you to the Minister for that update. That's much appreciated, and we certainly look forward to the presentation on June 5th. In my statement, I spoke about the benefits of a made-in-the-North curriculum. Building on the curriculum that's been taught at Aurora College for many years, what does the Minister envision for the new, call it "directions," which the curriculum of a polytechnic university might take on?
We've often heard it all along saying, "we need to get this right." With that polytechnic, we need to get this right. This isn't going to be something that's done too fast. The first thing was developing our vision, trying to find out what are our strengths; what programs should be done. One of the critiques that was in our college foundational report is we tried to do too much for everyone. Sometimes, when you try to do too much, like over 200 mandate question areas, you don't get enough done to address them all. You get spread too thin. We are trying to figure out what our specialization should be, and my direction has been all along from the beginning, I said that when I first came into the Assembly. I have not changed my stance. I am huge on accreditation. Accreditation means best practices. Whatever specialization will be defined, I want accredited programming, programming that our students can take their qualifications and go throughout Canada, internationally, to be able to provide their skills throughout. That is my direction, is that the curriculum be based on best practices, and that we work towards accrediting all of our programming at our polytechnic university.
Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you again to the Minister for that reply. I like her enthusiasm and definitely the excitement that she has about accreditation and, in particular, she mentioned about accreditation that could be awarded to those not just in the North, but outside the North, possibly outside Canada. Our post-secondary strategy must be central to provide better services and opportunities for our own young people, but a further advantage of a polytechnic university will be its ability to attract people from outside the North. I'd like to ask the Minister: what does the Minister envision in a strategy for attracting interest and participation from around Canada and other parts of the world? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
When I was travelling to the three communities three or four times, I had heard from staff and from students, et cetera, that they want to have great programming and that we need to have programming for northern students. People were a little bit concerned about national and international students, but it's a good thing. The reality is that our numbers in the Northwest Territories will make it challenging if we didn't look outside of the Northwest Territories.
I want to emphasize, the post-secondary that we provided in the Northwest Territories has to be for northern people based on Northern needs, and specializing the Northern strengths. That will define who we become, the courses that we offer. No sense doing everything. Like I said before, define what our strengths are. Once that is done and those programs are actually developed so that they're based on best practices, that they're quality programming, then, at that point, we need to do a serious student enrolment management plan that we actually look at, not only getting students from the Northwest Territories, gauging them, keep them in courses, but also looking nationally and internationally, because not only do we need to promote what we have the strengths of the Northwest Territories, but we also need the numbers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Question 750-18(3):
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Recently, I have been hearing rumours and concerns about the MTS fuel resupply from last year. It is my understanding that some of last year's fuel supply that was delivered to the shipyard in Hay River is apparently bad fuel. I'd like to ask the Minister of Infrastructure if he can tell us what happened in this situation? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, this is true. Some of the fuel that was supplied last year did not meet the specification required by Infrastructure. This, I do know, because we had to reject it and it had to be returned to the refinery at the supplier's expense.
I'd like to ask the Minister: whose responsibility was it for the bad fuel that was supplied to the communities?
It is the supplier's responsibility to meet the terms and conditions of the contract, and within that contract, supplying fuel at the appropriate specifications.
In light of the fuel supplier's responsibility in providing fuel that did not meet the specifications required by the department, I'd like to ask the Minister: what sort of recourse is available? Will the GNWT be able to be reimbursed for the cost of the fuel and for sending it back?
The Department of Infrastructure did not pay for any off-specification fuel that we received, and the supplier arranged for the recovery of the off-specification fuel at their own expense and took it back.
Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Minister for providing this information and clearing up some of the concerns and issues that I've been hearing. Finally, given the importance of fuel supplies to communities, what lessons has the Minister learned from this experience to help avoid a similar case in the future? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Department of Infrastructure, due to what happened last year, has actually asked the supplier to avoid these issues going forward by asking them to increase their inspection of their fuel-testing regime before the fuel is delivered to us. We've been working with them on that, and asked them to do that. We will continue to independently test the fuel received from our supplier to ensure it meets our required specifications. The department has also initiated a delivery risk management initiative that will involve staging one year's consumption volume of fuel in surplus capacities at NTPC's tank farms in Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk. A plan is in place to establish the strategic reserve of fuel during this year's shipping resupply. Those are some of the things that we have worked on from last year's lessons. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
