Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Northwest Territories is proudly represented by three of its finest athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. Please join me once again in recognizing the achievements of Yellowknife speed skater Michael Gilday, cross-country skier Jesse Cockney and Hay River biathlete Brendan Green.

Not far behind them are the young athletes counting down the days to the Arctic Winter Games in Fairbanks, Alaska. Each one of these Olympians got their start at the Arctic Winter Games and, more importantly, at NWT schools.

This past year the Yukon government...

Mr. Speaker, your committee would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Testing is very important for parents or even students. That is the cornerstone of how we are doing well.

With almost zero testing indicators from what we can see during this ERI Initiative transition, and with little framework of a national grading strategy, can the Minister indicate by what process will the department be able to evaluate our math performance or our success of our NWT students? Thank you.

I appreciate the Minister’s response. I think I really want to get rid some of the fuzziness around some of the changes that might be pending.

Would the Minister say we are maintaining our math standards towards more of the Discovery Learning or does he see us as maintaining more of a traditional charted course in math basics? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Canada’s recent decline on the global stage on math performance has sent a shiver of anxiety to every parent. The first step is to try to understand the issues both nationally and here at home.

The Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, recently released a damaging alarm call where it showed our Canadian 15-year-olds have slipped in global rankings in math competency; in fact, Canada’s downward spiral from sixth to 13th among participating countries since 2000. This, ironically, coincides with the adoption of Discovery Learning.

Now, the NWT, Yukon...

Again, I’m going to have to go back to Hansard and decipher that response. Again, I’m trying to get rid of the fuzziness around the changes that are pending, especially with this ERI Initiative.

Again, communication is paramount when we launch an initiative of this magnitude. Can the Minister elaborate on what kind of communication process and rollout expectation timeline will we see for this ERI Initiative and will math curriculum be affected in the near future? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I spoke about Canada’s recent decline on the global stage of our math performance. Coupled with what we already know about our extremely poor performance on our AAT Grade 9 math scores, the debate brewing between Discovery Learning and going back to basics is clearly circling the wagon at the recent launch of the Education Renewal and Innovation Initiative. My questions today will be for the Minister responsible, the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Our math curriculum for years has been based on the Alberta model. Can the Minister indicate...

Okay, so now we’re getting somewhere. We did have some feeder problems. If we agree that we did have some issues regarding the system failures, can the Minister elaborate how many other system failures occurred during the three-hour outage? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I thought. Given that the reported damages of almost $2 million, and given the fact that we heard today that faulty equipment is to blame for NTPC’s diesel generators not working property, and given that this government has not performed any cost accounting with this recent disaster, how can the Minister sit here in this House and indicate very little to satisfy public outcry for financial help? What is this Minister prepared to do to mitigate the situation? Thank you.

I thank the Minister for elaborating on the triggering event and we’ve heard about cascading events, which lead me to believe that we did have faulty equipment that caused an extended outage for no reason. Again, to compare other outages across Canada, minus 30 or minus 40 to minus 3 is not comparable.

Can the Minister indicate whether his office or NTPC has performed a full cost accounting of this recent power outage to evaluate the extent of current and future damage caused either to residents or to business, and if not, why? Thank you.