Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government is working in concert with the federal government to attract new Canadians to Yellowknife. It’s not surprising that newcomers will need help in orientation and service to make a successful transition, settle down and hopefully become residents. Unfortunately, recently the ECE immigrant settlement coordinator position became vacant, leaving people at a loss. The federal government, though, has an immigration officer in Yellowknife who, funnily enough, will not accept inquiries from the public, again leaving immigrants without a source of guidance and...

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Lafferty.

Mr. Lafferty.

Are there other sources, other programs for example on the education side of the department that provide child care subsidy?

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Lafferty.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The NWT ice patch study I see is not being renewed this year. The study was to help decision-makers in the development of effective management strategies for archaeological sites, wildlife populations, traditional economies at risk of impacts from our changing climate. I’m wondering, we’ve spent, obviously, over $100,000 on this study. I don’t recall seeing any results from that. Is this something the Minister could provide? Could the Minister provide Members reports from this work?

I appreciate the Minister’s remarks. I guess this is a 33 percent reduction to the Phoenix School. I’m taking from the Minister’s remarks that we’ve been overfunding this school, based on the costs that the department estimates they should have, by about 33 percent. That’s quite a disjuncture there. I guess I’ll be interested in seeing how this pans out. I think this has been a good analysis, if that is in fact the case and we are not causing the number of graduates to decrease and course completions to decrease. I’ll leave it at that for now.

What is the understanding of the Minister in terms of this amount meeting the need for this service?

Page 10-23, Education, Culture and Employment. Mr. Beaulieu.

I’ll take that as a no. I would urge this department to get that work done this year. There’s no need to wait for a review of our child development programs. This is a straightforward program in Aurora College that’s not up to standard. We don’t need to wait for a big, drawn out program next year to do this review. We simply need action, as we’ve been saying for our entire term, to get this up to standard. Will the Minister commit to doing that this year? Thank you.