Alfred Moses

As the questions before about the positions that were reduced, we can get that information from the department and give it to the Members, in what positions they were.

The government does fund both College nordique and Dechinta. It is later on in the business plan or in the main estimates under the post-secondary education.

I know with the reductions throughout the department, we did have plans for some of our employees. Some also sunsetted. Other positions were vacant. On these particular four, I don't have the update on whether or not they got into another department or into a job, but I will ask maybe my deputy minister for an update on if they were able to get employment for these four.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to present the 2016-2017 main estimates for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Overall, the department's estimates propose an increase of $6.06 million or two per cent over the 2015-2016 main estimates. These estimates continue to support the objectives of limiting expenditure growth in order to sustain the long-term sustainability of the fiscal framework. Highlights of the proposed estimates include:

$2 million to support NWT children through enhancements to the Income Assistance Benefit Program and NWT Child Benefit;

$2.2 million for...

Yes, please.

Yes, we are developing these monitoring, evaluation, and accountability plans moving forward. There was widespread consultation and guidance from external experts on this when we were going through the ministerial directive on the inclusive schooling moving forward. The consultation was there. Obviously, moving forward, we do want to monitor how our programs are working. We have a lot of new initiatives. This is one of them, but we also have the Pathways to Graduation, early childhood development. All these programs that are in this section, we are going to make sure that we are following up...

Each pot of funding has a different set of criteria to follow in terms of how you access it and we're always looking at ways we can improve it. That's something you'd take a look as well and see if there's anything in there to do something similar as we did to the arts operating funding.

Yes, as I said, from our department side of things, we could get that information. We don't know the full details with the other departments but that is something we can look into discussing, but our department can get those numbers to you.

That line item is specifically for the French and it is federal funding. For other Aboriginal languages we do have a line item at the top in the amount of $4.8 million. Our department is also looking at trying to get longer multi-year funding working with the federal government to ensure that it's sustainable funding moving forward, so that's some work that we, as a department, still got to do a little bit of work on.

Yes, we are staying on top of that in terms of what was put out in the court order. We are doing what the final decision was. We are working with the French groups in terms of developing that relationship to move forward in terms of: how do we adjust this? As I mentioned earlier, we are also working with the federal government in terms of trying to get some funding through their heritage plan, so there is a lot of areas that we are working on and trying to get situations addressed, both in Yellowknife and Hay River, and that is the next step.