Mr. Speaker, can the Minister provide us with a timeline for when we can expect his department to announce where the headquarters of the future polytechnic university will reside? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Thebacha. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since February, I've been talking about an implementation plan that I'm going to be releasing that will lay out the path forward to a final transformation to a polytechnic university, and I will be releasing that in the coming weeks. That is going to have some key dates in there, and it talks about things like the facilities plan. The college is going to go out and do an assessment of all the different facilities and see what's in place, and that can inform things like programming and things like the Member is talking about. I can say, and I've said before, I've never heard any discussion from within the department about moving the headquarters. If there is already a headquarters in Fort Smith, I don't know why we would build a headquarters somewhere else.
I don't have an exact timeline for the Member, but we will be appointing a board at some point in the future. That board is going to operate at arm's length, and it's going to have much more discretion over human resources matters. That's what everyone wants, is an arm's length board. I can't tell that board what to do, but I have no plans to move any headquarters. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Does the Minister consider it problematic that the City of Yellowknife is already operating under the assumption that a future polytechnic university will be headquartered here, in spite of no formal announcement?
I'm not sure under what premise the City of Yellowknife is operating. I'm sure they have a desire to have infrastructure built in the community. I mean, any community leader does. I expect that, but I think there is a lot of maybe confusion about what a university has to be, these days. A lot of people, in their minds, still see a big, single building made of brick with ivy growing up the walls and a big quad where students are sitting out in the sun reading, but that's not the way things are these days. With technology, you can have campuses that are spread out. When I went to university, I was in one faculty, and there was a faculty next door to me. I never went in that building. It could have been a thousand miles away, as far as I was concerned. I want to dispel the notion that a polytechnic university is going to be one single campus in one single community. The plan is to strengthen all of the campuses in the territory, and the community learning centres, and the presence of the college in all communities.
Given that Fort Smith already has much of the infrastructure, an existing knowledge-based economy, and a highly qualified workforce employed presently in a campus atmosphere, it would only make sense to keep the future headquarters in Fort Smith. Does the Minister agree?
I think it would be an odd choice, given everything, if I made the recommendation to uproot 40-some people and move them to Yellowknife and move the administrative offices of Aurora College to a different community. To the Member's question, does it make sense to keep the people employed where they live in the building that they are currently working in? Of course, it does.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Thebacha.
Mr. Speaker, it's extremely important that we get strong leadership as the president of the future polytechnic university, with a strong governance structure that reflects all of the NWT and ex officio members from across Canada. However, no matter how many documents and papers the department publishes, if there isn't strong leadership at the top, with strong innovative visions for the future, I worry that we won't create a truly northern-based polytechnic university. Does the Minister agree? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
There are only two ways organizations become successful: strong leadership and dumb luck. I'm not going to bank on dumb luck, so I agree that we do need strong leadership. The current president of Aurora College, I believe he is doing an excellent job. Right now, we need to strengthen the foundation. There needs to be real organizational fortification, and that is moving along very well. I've been very happy with what I've seen. Once there is a board of directors, a board of governors appointed, then they will use their knowledge and their vision, frankly, to find a president who they believe is suitable, and the board of governors will also play a very important role.
For those of you who have read the government's paper, you will know that we are proposing to have a board based on competencies, things like financial expertise, legal expertise, marketing expertise, experts on reconciliation, people with experience in post-secondary, so I think that leadership at the board level is going to help ensure success, as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes.
