Caroline Cochrane

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "Aurora College Foundational Review." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I take that as a compliment, that I could go on all day. I am excited about this portfolio. How many of the targets have been met? As the Member stated, I am just new to the portfolio. I have talked about a few that I have heard about that I am totally passionate about and said, yes, let's go further with those. I have not yet gone through the whole 200 of them, but I am working diligently to go through them, and I promise, I will go through every one of those 200 ones and make sure that we are on target. Keep what's working, expand what's successful, and throw out what's showing not to be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The education renewal was to take place over a 10-year span, from 2014 to 2024. Some of the initiatives have been implemented; some of them are just in pilot stages; and some of them are still in development. Are they working? I think that, yes, some of them are working. Do I think that it is acceptable that we have a low achievement in the territories, still? No. That is absolutely not acceptable. It breaks my heart when I hear that children are dropping out, that people are having to do upgrading, so, no, Mr. Speaker, I don't think it's acceptable that we have low...

Yes, education in the Northwest Territories should be about best practices. Best practices does talk about transparency and accountability. I have already been working on them about accountability. Transparency, I will commit that, the next session, we will provide an update to standing committee. I will do a Minister's statement in the House to talk about where we are. Websites are not my strong point, but I will push the department to actually make sure that our website is updated before the next session. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I did take note when the MLA did his opening comments and he said that success isn't only academic; it's also succeeding in life. He is absolutely right, Mr. Speaker. It's not just about whether you get an A, B, C, or a D, or if you drop out. It's about can you succeed in life, and so there are some things that we have done that I am really excited about.

We have done a Healthy Food for Learning. There is a direct link that says that children who are not fed properly do not learn well. Every school in the Northwest Territories now has food in it. That is incredible for me. The northern distance...

Mr. Speaker, expanding opportunities for post-secondary education for our residents is a priority of this Legislative Assembly. The Department of Education, Culture and Employment is pursuing an ambitious post-secondary agenda that is guided by the mandate of this government.

For more than 50 years, residents of the Northwest Territories have relied on Aurora College for their adult and post-secondary education and training. The college continues to be critical to our economic and social development, but we know we can and must do better.

The Government of the Northwest Territories has been...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The portables that are coming in actually will be retained by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. In previous years, we bought portables and we gave them to the school authorities, and then it was hard to transfer them.

They will be used for the school that will be replaced. It will be a couple of years, and then, at that time, we will be determining the best usage for them. At this point, we are not handing them over to Infrastructure. They will stay as assets for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to be used where needed. Thank you, Mr...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, that Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Social Assistance Act, be read for the second time. The bill amends the Social Assistance Act to extend the term of appeal board members from two years to up to four years and to extend the list of public bodies with which information shared under the act may be shared to include Indigenous governments. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The first time we tried to do an evaluation was in the Inuvik campaign school, and that time, it was actually just another woman in another department who was willing to do that work. Sad to say, that woman was an affected employee, and that kind of stopped the work before it was done.

We did have a draft, though, and I do apologize to the MLA from Yellowknife Centre. I thought I had shared that with her in confidence, and if I haven't, then I am more than willing. If she would let me know, then I will share that draft in confidence with her, because it never got finished, but I apologize...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Status of Women Council actually was doing campaign schools within the communities for a couple of years. I am not sure how long, in all honesty, but we found that they were only working at getting women into the Legislative Assembly. Not that we don't need to get women into the Assembly, but we do need to branch out into other directions; so we looked at their model, and we looked at designing it to meet better needs.

We took it internally in the short term to be able to address the issues, such as getting more women into municipal or Aboriginal governments or...