Alfred Moses

We don't know what's going to be in the internal review of the Social Work Program. We don't know what's in the final report of the foundational review. Once we get those, we are going to develop a management response, as I've mentioned in this House, that's going to work on looking at the recommendations. It's going to give us an opportunity to consider the feasibility of each of the recommendations. It also is going to talk about the analysis of the recommendations, and how we implement them so that all our stakeholders, that all Members of this House can make evidence-based decisions. Until...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we made the decision to phase out the social work program based on low enrolment and low graduation rates. It had a history of low rates over the years. The Aurora College decided to an independent, internal review on its own. I do understand that review is going to be completed in April 2018. We will see where that review and what recommendations that review has in terms of moving forward with the long-term strategic plan for the Aurora College. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Just to give you a little information here. When we increase the minimum wage come April 1st of this year, about 700 people in the Northwest Territories will be affected, will be getting an increase. Having a living wage, as I mentioned, would possibly have some impacts on our employers. We all know that a lot of our businesses and people who do business in the Northwest Territories don't even pay the minimum wage; they pay a lot higher than that. In the tax-based communities, it gets even higher. You won't be looking at a living wage, and we will continue the same route that we are on. Thank...

I don't have that detail of the percentage of programs that are being currently run throughout any of our three campuses in the Northwest Territories at the moment, but I can look at getting that information for the Member and sharing it with him.

Setting the minimum wage to increase with inflation could actually limit our ability to explore other options for adjusting the minimum wage rates. Prior to the forming of the Minimum Wage Committee, they did look at such measures as the Consumer Price Index. At that time, it was felt that having this committee of business, labour organizations, and the community was the best way to go to look at all areas that would help set the options for minimum wage. At this time, the minimum wage will be indexed to inflation. We're not looking at it at this time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently at this time, no. We do have public funds that fund the Aurora college, and we partner with them to look at their program services that they provide to residents of the Northwest Territories. What I can let the Member know is that we are working currently on an over-arching legislation that will bring other possibilities of post-secondary institutes here to the Northwest Territories as well working with Dechinta Research and Learning Centre, College nordique, that will offer those opportunities. So we are on the right path. Right now, we're going to work with...

I encourage any of the students who experience any kind of concerns or issues going down to post-secondary education in the South for the first time to possibly call their client service officer at the Student Financial Assistance office. We also have supports through our Indigenous governments and our partnerships, and we work with them on how to identify some of those barriers and challenges.

I also know that a lot of our Indigenous governments take students who are about to graduate on tours of post-secondary institutions down in the South to give them an idea of how it is going to be when...

I think a focus for any jurisdiction is how do we identify gaps and challenges and how do we mitigate them so that we have our students succeeding to completion of either their programs or getting the degrees that they need so that they can be part of the working society. Ways that we do that are through counselling; we are also looking at creating better supports within the post-secondary systems, within Aurora College or within our other post-secondary partners that we work with.

It is always a challenge, and we have got to find unique ways to identify those challenges. I know that the Member...

The Member is right. We do have an agreement that we have signed. We are just waiting for the announcement from the Government of Canada that will increase the amount of funding we will have in the Northwest Territories. As I mentioned in this House, we have 11 communities that don't have any early childhood programming outside junior kindergarten that we implemented in the school.

We want to ensure that we put a focus on those communities that currently don't have early childhood programming and also continue to sustain other daycare spaces and daycare programs throughout the Northwest...

There are other ways. One way was: everyone knows that junior kindergarten is optional. For the parents, single parents, even, who enter their four-year-olds into the junior kindergarten system, I did mention that it saves the families anywhere from $8,000 to $12,000 per year. On the family side of things, it is economically having an impact on some of the families across the Northwest Territories. Also, areas that we are able to help the junior kindergarten classrooms, as well as Aboriginal Head Start, they were able to access the $5,000 one-time funding to get pay-based materials into the...