Jackson Lafferty

Again, it was brought up in this House about the Sahtu and will there be a training institution. We were waiting on the training needs assessment and the assessment of the communities, which involves the stakeholders, the industry, the community leaders and community educators. Now we have that package and now we need to identify what’s needed in the Sahtu region when it comes to program development and also a training centre area, how is that going to look. Based on the package that we received, those are options that we’re going to create and then deliver that to the Sahtu region.

We just know that over a five-year period it’s around 70 percent, but we can provide the detailed information to the Members.

Yes. It’s a great possibility. In fact, I’ll be addressing that with the Board of Governors when we’re meeting in June. We’ve already addressed with the Board of Governors a while ago, and they are developing their corporate plan for a long-term strategy. This will obviously be part of their strategy, community learning centres in all communities. They should be producing highly skilled, qualified people. That’s my view, that’s my push, and I fully support that. The Members support that, as well, so we’ll continue to push that forward.

Madam Chair, that is correct; they are two separate issues. We have been talking about the collection, how we can collect or be aggressive in that area. I’ve been dealing with my department on how to address those matters at hand because we have to take the Auditor General’s recommendations seriously into consideration, so that’s what we are doing. Those are two separate issues with requests of the $5 million to increase. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to make it clear. If I was forcing the school boards to use their surplus, I would take all the surplus back, which I am not doing. It is at the discretion of the school boards to use the funding towards educational programming, and we highly encourage them to do that. Some of the boards have, as I stated in this House, substantial surpluses. When it comes to enrolment, if the enrolment goes up, then obviously the financial aspect of the school boards, their contribution increases as well. Those are areas that we continue to closely monitor and provide additional funds...

Mahsi, Madam Chair. To my left is Jolene Saturnino. She’s the director of income security within the ECE department. Also, to my right is Ken Chutskoff, legislative counsel within Justice. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, when I talk about the action plan, yes, it’s been directed to us that we need to have more time to engage the general public because it will be their document, their solutions, their ideas and their suggestions. So I have allowed more time for that to happen. We want to deliver a draft action plan by this fall – that’s the target date – and deliver that in the House potentially I am hoping by February session or sooner. It all depends on the engagement that we’re conducting.

When the Member is talking about using existing resources or new funding, those are a mixture of information...

Mahsi, Madam Speaker. I am pleased to introduce Bill 24, An Act to Amend the Student Financial Assistance Act. The purpose of this legislation is to raise the maximum aggregate of the principal amounts of all student loans that may be made by the Government of the Northwest Territories.

The maximum aggregate principal amount of student loans that the government may lend under the Student Financial Assistance Act is currently set at $40 million. The amendment proposes to increase this amount to $45 million for the fiscal year 2014-2015 and thereafter. This change is required to allow the...

Mahsi. Aurora College Board of Governors does work with the students. We deliver the best program we possibly can in the Northwest Territories, along with our partners further down south at various institutions. We’ll continue to make that a success. Mahsi.

With any organization there is a budgeting process. We have to work with that. As the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, we provide public money to these organizations. There is the accountability issue and transparency issues, so we’ll continue to support that.