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, Mr. Speaker. When we are rolling out the program this fall, as I mentioned earlier, 22 out of 29 communities are going full force with the introduction of junior kindergarten and the rest will follow a year after and then the third year phased approach.

As I stated yesterday, two days ago I met with the board chairs of YCS and YK1 and we gave them some information that will be a useful part of their calculation of numbers. So we need to have actual, concrete, factual numbers and those are the facts that we want to lay out. The information that was introduced in the media is misleading...

This Minister is accountable to the general public of the Northwest Territories. We did work with the superintendents where they gave us an idea of instead of just 10 to 12, cover all aspects K to 12. We listened to them. We made those changes that reflects on that. Also, 16 to 1, if they’re beyond that there’s new money with PTR that we are going to influx into the school boards.

Again, we’re contributing to all the school boards across the Northwest Territories based on enrolment across the North.