Alfred Moses

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. Yes, we are going to be needing social workers over the next 15 years. It was recognized in the in-demand jobs that are going to be needed here in the Northwest Territories, and we continue to support students who want to go get that degree education, and the students who are currently in the program, we want to continue to support them should they want to come out of that diploma and go and seek a degree down South and help them with that smooth transition. We are continuing to support them as the program itself gets phased out to make sure that all students who are in...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have said it before, where we fund the education authorities over $150 million. They have their own responsibility in how they budget their line items and getting the decisions that they make with funding that we do give to them. That would be a decision that the education authorities would have to make. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are currently developing an immigration strategy. The good news is our nominations program has been increasing by about 25 per cent each year, and last year we actually reached our goal and actually went above and beyond. I believe a total in 2016 we had 128, which was above what is normally seen. We continue to promote that program, as well as working with ITI on the business side, but we are developing an immigration strategy right now in partnership with ITI. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and as I mentioned back in September we did meet with the Aurora College with a reduction target. They did some work in collaboration with our departments, and these programs were the ones that were identified. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, that is correct, as well as working on community projects as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are still expecting to have an approach, a plan, in place for the fall time. In light of all the changes that we are making within the department and all the initiatives that we're doing, that's just on top of the workload that we have, but we're still hoping that in the fall time we'll have something.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do have an arts strategy. It is probably a few years old, but we can take a look at it again and evaluate how it's working. Thank you, Mr. Chair.