Jackson Lafferty

I don’t see this as a top-heavy approach. I don’t believe in that. I believe in working together. I met with the client service officers, most of them, just a couple months ago, to share their perspectives, coming from a small community perspective, working with the chiefs and working with the council members, community members. As I stated, in 2014 we made changes. The wellness is part of it now and we will continue to make those changes. All those recommendations, ideas and suggestions that are coming to my office, certainly consider those part of the changes.

The productive choices, again, we work with the organizations, the corporations and the community to satisfy their needs as well. Those individuals are employable, ready to work and should be out there doing productive choices whether it be on a volunteering basis. I realize that from the small community perspective there may not be huge opportunities to do those productive choices, but we’re working with wellness programming and other programs in the community. So from time to time we do evaluate our productive choices and we’ve made some changes. In 2014 we made some changes. We added...

Again, when I met with the school board chairs on the 13th of May, we gave them an extended week until the 23rd of May to go back to their communities and regions and identify how many students would be registered. So they had until May 23rd to give us the actual enrolment numbers, so it was based on the fact that we’re producing these numbers. It was corresponding with the school boards. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I stated earlier that the surplus is at the discretion of the school boards, how they want to spend it, but we’ve always encouraged them to spend it on educational programming. It is up to the school boards to spend on programming in their communities and region. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I’m glad the Member is referring to taxpayers’ money. It is public money, the surplus that’s been accumulated. Some are substantial amounts and those monies should be expended into educational programming, so we support that as well.

When we first introduced junior kindergarten, we worked with the superintendents and they gave us some ideas of how we could mitigate and also work with the existing funding that has been introduced. Based on that, we came up with some numbers, a first and second and third year approach based on the 29 communities and then on to the regional centres and, finally, the Yellowknife school boards. Based on that, I’ve also committed that anything beyond 16 to 1 student teacher ratio I will be subsidizing as a department, as the Minister responsible for education. Based on that, the PTR, that’s why...

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to share some exciting news about the rollout of junior kindergarten that will begin in the fall of 2014. There has been much discussion on how we are implementing junior kindergarten, and we carefully considered comments and concerns raised by education boards on the rollout of junior kindergarten.

Mr. Speaker, we put the decision to education boards and gave them a choice of whether they wanted to implement junior kindergarten in the fall of this year, or defer it to next year.

I am pleased to announce that of the 29 small communities who were offered the chance to...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The answer would be no. We’re using internal resources.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure where the Member is getting that poaching word from, but we’re dealing with the public purse and we’re dealing with the public funding that we contribute to all school boards across the Northwest Territories, 33 communities, seven regions. We will continue to do so and which will benefit our students.

Client service officers are there to implement the regulations and the legislation that we pass through this House, and we provide the guidance to them, the direction that they have to follow, the legislation and the rules and regulations that are in place that we have established for them. We are trying to be fair to each and every client service clientele out in the communities, the 33 communities that we service. We have client service officers in most of the communities, and the regional centres assist with those that may not have it. We’re doing what we can in the income security division...