Alfred Moses

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document entitled "Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Motion 26-18(2): Junior kindergarten." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I know the reduction review that we are going through with Aurora College has sparked a lot of discussion and debate right across the Northwest Territories. It sheds light on some of the concerns that the honourable Member has mentioned in terms of the foundational structure of Aurora College administration. If that is a review that the government wants to go through, that is something that we would take a look at, and see what are some of our challenges and barriers within the Aurora College system that we are having high dropout rates in these two specific programs, and that our graduation...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and yes, we do have third-party reviews by other partner institutions that, obviously, we work with. For instance, the Bachelor of Education program is reviewed by the University of Saskatchewan. The nursing program is credited and reviewed by the Canadian Association of School and Nursing, as well as the Registered Nurses' Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The trades program, that is reviewed under the Apprenticeships Division within our department.

It is something that we always look at and look into in terms of reviewing the program, making sure...

Thank you, Mr. Chair -- Mr. Speaker. I am sorry. It was a long day yesterday in Committee of the Whole. We have already begun looking at and reviewing our guidelines. We are working with the departments on how community projects in other departments are implementing, how we can support that and also have some job creation moving forward. We are trying to find ways we can promote the program to our small communities, our Aboriginal government, industry, as well as our employers.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is planning to develop a small community employment strategy in 2017. As the Member noted, and as we have heard questions in the House, there have been concerns about how we roll out the program. It is a significant increase from the $1.25 million that we had in the two line items. Moving forward, obviously we are going to have to get feedback from small communities, work with the small communities to see what the challenges are, what barriers are in place, and how we can roll out some of this funding, as well as working with the committee to get their...

A lot of these things were indicators in terms of reductions within the program. As mentioned in the honourable Member's statement, he was talking about the indemand jobs that we are going to see in the future. For K12 teachers by 2030, it is going to be 1,354 teachers in the K12 system. Currently, Aurora College graduates an average of seven. We continue to support our outofterritory students.

We have 33 right now down south. For degreed social workers, it is 158. Aurora College does not offer a degree program, but we do work with students who want to go and continue their education down south...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To my knowledge, we didn't ask them to look for thirdparty funding to offset the reductions. When we looked at these two programs, as I have said many times in this House, the department in collaboration with Aurora College did look at efficiencies.

We do give a big investment into these programs. The graduates that we weren't getting out of the program was an indicator. These two programs were both selected and brought forth to this government to have this debate on the program. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do agree; we invest a lot of money in Aurora College. We've seen with these two programs in particular that there were some challenges. We have low graduation rates. Once again, I do want to emphasize to any of the students who might be listening who are in these programs: focus, study hard to completion and graduation, because that was one of the indicators that brought these programs forward. I will talk with the departments about that foundational review. We'll have discussions. We'll sit down with the chair as well as with the president and see what the next steps...

I agree with the Member that we do need to do a better job of making sure that Aurora College is accountable, not only to the department. It is public dollars that we are investing into Aurora College, so they can provide the programs as well as the services to meet the educational needs of our residents, our young adults, so that they can get into the career force and be part of society and working in their communities, hopefully.

We are working on developing an accountability framework currently with Aurora College, but we have also set up more scheduled meetings with the board of governors...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, as I mentioned, we are going to be working with the departments to identify community projects and initiatives as well as working with our Aboriginal governments, municipal governments, organizations in the small communities that might look at developing small project, so we can put this money to use, so we can get our residents the skills that they need to enter the workforce, the labour market, and help develop the skills and the training they need so that they can seek work throughout the Northwest Territories.