Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will have to get back to the MLA on that and actually get the actual facts on that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

One of the first things, of course, that that person will have to do is get used to what he is walking into, or she is walking into. They will have to look at taking over the overall supervision, the operations of the normal day-to-day operations within all the campuses. Because we will be starting the vision exercise, they will be actually working with that close vision exercise, not only for the Northwest Territories, but taking that vision and then what we define as a vision of the Territories, they will be defining what the vision is for the polytechnic university. They will be taking our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do want to take a moment to state that I do not see the MLA who just asked me the question as a coward. I see him as a very capable MLA, so I will start with that.

What have we done? What have we done so far? We put out the ad, and so again I will be releasing very soon where we are with the hiring practise. That will be coming up, by the latest, on Monday. I will be doing a Minister's statement on the polytechnic at that time. We have done visits, three visits to all three communities, and that was a lot. In fairness, when I went to the communities, there was a lot of...

I am a little bit shocked. I am wondering if the MLA has more information than I do, because I didn't know that we were having a new campus in Yellowknife at this time. We are still working with the City of Yellowknife to define if that is a brick and mortar or if it actually is building on what they have already. So those decisions have not been made, and my commitment has been to work very closely with the municipal government to determine that need. Like I said, the first couple of years are around planning, and the definition of what headquarters looks like or where it will be will be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, I think that the first thing to do, actually, was to hire the person to actually become the associate deputy minister, would be the first priority, and that is what we focused on. Actually defining where the headquarters are, we spent a lot of time, Mr. Speaker. I went to the three communities, Inuvik, Yellowknife, and Fort Smith, a total of three times. I met with the community counsellors there. I met with public meetings. I spent a lot of time, and I heard clearly, I heard clearly, that students and staff see the benefits of all three communities, and I see the...

Currently, it doesn't have a cost of living index included into it. This is just the start of the program. We have increased the threshold. We have increased the amount. We have looked at it on more of an equitable basis, so based on communities that have a similar cost of living.

Once this season is over, this summer, then we will be doing a review of it again to make sure, but I cannot stress enough. I take heed of the Member from Nahendeh stating that many seniors do not even reach this. I mean, $56,000 for the lowest zone is quite a bit of money, although you can struggle on it. So if you...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Education, Culture and Employment regularly reviews programs to make sure they are still meeting the needs of people; in this case, seniors in our communities. We recognize that there was a need to expand our program because we weren't subsidizing people who had rental accommodations; we were only subsidizing homeowners. In my personal opinion, oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes homeowners are often at a financial advantage to people who have to rent. Not always.

So we expanded it so that we could include renters, and we increased our income...

It is kind of a sin to hear that schools feel threatened and that they feel that they have got to hold onto their money and have a surplus to meet their needs. My background was in the NGO world, and surpluses were a luxury that we never actually got to use. If we had seen it, we spent it as soon as we got it. I really want education bodies to know to use their money. We are not going to dry up; we are still going to provide funding.

Some of the work that is going on right now is I meet with the education bodies a couple of times a year. When I have gone to those meetings, they have all been...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am glad you noted that, because I was going, "There must be at least ten questions in that one statement." I am going to try to pick one of them out of there, and then he can slam me with the other ones.

The Member had stated that we are currently undergoing this review. That is not correct. We are in the process of just looking at it. I had just returned from the Nahendeh and realized that other jurisdictions have different funding formulas, and therefore, I have made a commitment that we will begin the work towards looking at how other jurisdictions provide their...

The funding formula is reviewed on a regular basis. We try to work with our school authorities, school bodies, to make sure that it meets their needs, as well. In saying that, though, some things are addressed as the needs come up. For example, just after I assumed this position as Education, Culture and Employment Minister, when it was brought to my attention by the MLA from Nahendeh, who stated that we only had one teacher in small schools, that was an area of concern for me, and so I moved on that quite quickly to actually make sure that we have a minimum of two teachers in every single...