Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is not in the mains, because it is in the individual education bodies' budgets. It is usually external funding. A lot of the schools actually get external funding, such as Jordan's Principle. However, within this area, we do provide support to them in things such as filling out the applications and reviewing the applications. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Every district or education body actually has to have an operational plan. It's not an operational plan that we do as Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Each educational body does their operational plan. We don’t currently have money within our budget to actually do a regional review of the Sahtu. In fairness, if I did one, I'd have to do all of the regions because that's how I operate. I can speak to the education council, and if the council is willing, then I don't see any reason why they wouldn't meet with their leadership. If the council sees that as...

As stated, I didn't get any of those questions beforehand, so no, I do not have the enrolment of the French schools on hand at this moment. We do have 49 schools in the Northwest Territories. It is impossible for me to try to memorize those all and bring them up with advanced notice. Therefore, I cannot say where we stay close to the 85 percent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. An evaluation is being done based on years one and two of the implementation, and it is going to be released early in 2019-2020, so we are in the process of doing that. Or sorry, 2019-2020. The one thing I do need to say, though, is that I have met with the education leaders, the board chairs, the board authorities, or education bodies, and their superintendent, and I have also met with the NWT Association of Teachers, and both bodies have said this is a great program and we need to continue it. So it is an informal evaluation, but it is word-of-mouth by organizations...

. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have asked my staff, and, at this point, they do not know, but they both look bewildered. I can commit that, when we get that, childcare and the productive choices should be included. If a person only has a short appointment or the person is coming in, we need to look at that, but, if people are going to regular appointments, they need to be provided childcare supports for that. Yes, it is something I am definitely going to take heed of, and I would appreciate if the MLA could put that in her comments so that it can actually remind me. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, that is correct.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am very cautious of what I am taking on. Recognizing that we have six months left, this is one that is a priority for me, so yes. I have already asked the department to go cross-jurisdictional and look at how their funding formulas are done.

I do have to give credit to the MLA for Nahendeh, who first brought that to my attention, and it was a concern for me as well. I am looking across jurisdictions to see if there is a better way to fund. We are looking at lower enrolments in the Northwest Territories, so we can't keep basing it on enrolments if our numbers are going...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, I am not a big fan of doing budgeting, either. That is not based on some kind of research, calling the utilities, checking what the enrolments were, checking what the needs are. I am going to make the assumption that Aurora College has done that all themselves. We give them the money as a contribution agreement. They provide their budget and then their annual reports as they deem fit. That has been a luxury. The government response says that we are only going to work with them for a couple of years, and the whole focus is to get them independent, because that is a...

Currently, the Education Act actually does define what can be provided through student financial assistance. It is legislated, so it is difficult. We need to look at it and actually change the legislation, which is a lot more difficult than changing policies. Will we look at it? Absolutely. It is part of the process that we need to look at within the college. The difference, though, is that normal upgrading courses can be addressed within their communities, through schools and the community learning centres, which we only have 21 of, I recognize.

The access programs, really, are not a general...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Absolutely, it is important that we do evaluations of any new program that we are rolling out, so we commit to doing that. I do want to just say a little bit that change is something that is never usually accepted very easily. I am sure that when we rolled out the Northern Distance Learning, there were comments or complaints, as well, and yet it is proven to be very successful, so initial comments on change should not be something that we evaluate it on. It should be a formal evaluation process that is carried out at the end of each school year to see if they are working...