Jackson Lafferty

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I will be more than happy to present the current status of what has been happening to the standing committee. They can certainly share with the general public as well. We can certainly do that, too, and put it on our website. Just updating on where we have been, Mr. Speaker, this is all preliminary at this point. I am not sure how far we will be, but certainly what we have talked about is still in the preliminary stages. We need to develop a business case scenario between the three jurisdictional territorial governments. We will be meeting with the federal Minister as we...

Mr. Speaker, I do agree that education is the best gift that we can provide to the Northwest Territories. I did provide to the Member that one can look at it as not a university base, but we are delivering university core courses and we are graduating teachers with degree programs. A Member can look at it as not a base but we are expanding on our programs.

The three main campuses that we have, the goal is to expand further so it is recognized as a university of the north or the university of the Arctic. That is the vision that we have with Minister Strahl. The three jurisdictions, Territorial...

Mr. Speaker, I do agree that elders are valuable and the importance of their presence in the schools I fully support. Along with this strategic initiative, that will be part of the discussion as we move forward. We need to get around a system of how we pay them. That has been a very controversial issue lately because of their pension claw-back from the federal government. We certainly don’t want to have any impact on their pension, so we are trying to work around a system how it is feasible to do. We are currently discussing that. I did have feedback from the Sahtu MLA on how we can manoeuvre...

Mr. Speaker, our goal and mandate is to provide the true quality education here in the Northwest Territories along with the partnership with the various southern institutions so they do accredit our programs as well. We deliver high school programs, not only that but post-secondary as well. We have been successful in that degree.

I did a Member’s statement, 102 graduates out of the post-secondary. We are pushing the students through the venue through post-secondary level and through the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. That is an area that will be the prime focus on the education...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Throughout our Territory, graduation and convocation ceremonies are taking place to acknowledge the great and many achievements of our talented and gifted students.

We have over 8,600 students enrolled in grades kindergarten to 12 in 49 schools across the North. As each student progresses to each new grade level, they bring with them many lessons and skills to further build on and develop. We congratulate these students for their hard work and recognize their efforts in successfully completing an important educational milestone.

At the post-secondary level, 2009-2010 saw 102...

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Once we identify assessment that needs to take place in that particular school, again, DEA -- sorry, DEC -- we need to work with and to identify as a capital project as well, either for next year or the following year. It depends on the space required.

I realize that, visiting the school, the space was maxed out. That is a concern to me, as well, having visited the school. We’ll continue to work with the DEC on identifying what is a priority for the community of Colville Lake and for our Department of Education, Culture and Employment.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. It was a spectacular trip to the Sahtu region and we did visit the school as well, toured the school there. Yes, it is a small school for the size of the population, but at the same time we are discussing, as part of the capital planning process, we need to reassess, we need to re-evaluate the school status. There may be other schools similar to that, but those are ongoing discussions that we do have with the district education authorities or council. It will be at their request, as well, if they are concerned or they want to have an extension on their school or a new...

Mr. Speaker, I did touch on that. That is our vision with the federal Minister for the territorial jurisdictions. We see this coming. Definitely that is an area of vision that we have in our target, is to establish an Athabasca University type here in the Northwest Territories and supporting the other two Nunavut and Yukon campuses as well. Mr. Speaker, those are the ongoing discussions that we are having.

I think we definitely will see a light because what we are discussing here, there is a university of the Arctic funding flowing through Saskatchewan. Of course, yes, the money has been scaled...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think we have to keep in mind that we are delivering university courses right now. We currently deliver degree programs and masters programs at current stages right now, but we are exploring further to delivering more of university-type programs to our schools, into our institutions, the three main campuses that we have. I just recently met with my colleagues in Nunavut, in the Yukon, on exploring options and how it’s going to look, a university of the Arctic. We realize that more work needs to take place.

At the same time, I just recently met with Minister...