Jackson Lafferty

When we talk about bringing the agriculture programming into our school system, I need to work very closely with ITI since they have that portfolio. But by all means, this is an area that we need to explore further, to see what’s out there in the regions, in the communities, and present that idea to the school boards as well. So, most definitely this will be our topic of discussion. Mahsi.

Mahsi. It’s not actually positions. It’s full-time equivalency. If the enrollment is down it goes back to the school boards and they decide where. It’s up to the school boards to decide how many teachers or janitors or teacher assistants to be hired. So, it’s based on the actual overall budget that we provide to them. Maybe if I can get my deputy to elaborate a bit more because she’s involved with the FTEs and enrollment. When the enrollment numbers go down, my team has to work with all the school boards. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. To my left is deputy minister of ECE, Gabriela Eggenhofer; to my immediate right is Olin Lovely, assistant deputy minister of corporate services; and to my far right, Dana Heide, associate deputy minister with ECE.

Mahsi. The overall increase, obviously, is a Collective Agreement that we have to abide with, and it’s an area that we need to work with. So, it’s a Collective Agreement. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. We are seriously looking at the Sahtu region, especially with the downturn of the oil and gas operations in that region and what will be the implications on those community members. Are they going to be accessing income security programming? How many individuals are we talking about? We can definitely give you the detailed breakdown for the last two years and going onwards because we need to monitor this. This is part of our Skills for Success, as well, the needs analysis that we have done, the needs assessment, how can we integrate those individuals to be trained for future...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. We did a comprehensive review in 2007, and since then we’ve been making changes to our Income Security Program. It’s been eight years now. Obviously, this is an area that we need to seriously look at. As I stated in this House, in 2015 we’re making changes when it comes to subsidy. We’re increasing our overall subsidy programs. It may not be comprehensive to date but this is an area that we need to discuss as a department to move forward. It could be part of the transitional document to have very comprehensive security programming. That should likely take place within the...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. When I speak to the college, obviously we work closely with that community’s learning centre so we have them in the communities, most of the communities. Yes, the Member is quite correct about…and we’ve been supportive along the way on the needs assessment in the Sahtu region and it’s going really well. We have all the stakeholders involved, all the parties from the Sahtu region and various industry members. So, there is a lot of discussion and opportunity for us to move forward on this, and obviously this will possibly lead to a Sahtu institutional discussion that the Member...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. I’d like to say thank you to the Members. This is the last budget process for Dana Heide and Gabriela Eggenhofer. I would like to thank them and wish them the best of luck. They will be retiring in 2015, so mahsi cho.

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Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Since we introduced the Early Childhood Worker Grant Program we had just around 200 applicants from across the Northwest Territories and we’re almost at 100 percent in the approval process. It’s been very, very successful to date even though it’s very preliminary. But over 200 applications came in and most of them will be approved, so we should be close to, if not 100 percent, close to 100 percent. We’re very happy with the progress that we’ve made on this particular matter.

Those are questions that I had with the board chair. What kind of resources do they need to be back up and running? Obviously, he needs to sit down with his board and highlight those key areas of what it would require to establish CKLB online again. At the end of the day, it’s the federal government that’s the process we have to work with, but we’re doing what we can as a department while we’re waiting for the federal government to push that forward.

So, I met with the board chair and also with the board to decide on the next steps. Again, financial accountant, we offered that, we offered...