Jackson Lafferty

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Again, it has been brought up, because I’ve visited the campuses as well when I met with the president and the board chair. Some of the students raised that issue. It is an ongoing challenge for some students, so we’re doing what we can to subsidize them through my department, continue to subsidize them. But we’re fully aware of it, and any of those challenges that come to our attention we expedite the process, having our staff meet with the college president to identify it is an issue that we need to deal with. I wouldn’t say it’s smooth sailing at this point. There are...

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi. Most definitely. There will be evaluations. We’re currently in the process of developing MEA accountability on monitoring, evaluating and accountability on all initiatives that are before us because we want to monitor them and we want to evaluate them because we’re accountable to deliver that. So of those initiatives, there will be evaluation processes as well. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This has been brought to our attention from some of the parents who want their child to be fully aware of financial awareness. Based on that, we’ve been dealing with our DEAs and DECs. If they haven’t provided an actual curriculum relating to the fiscal outlook, the financial management, time management, those are areas that we talk about, CALM class. We have some of the communities that do the program delivery of CALM class, a career and life choice management course that’s also taught in our high schools. So that is an area that students can take on courses to learn life...

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...

We’ve worked with various experts throughout Canada, even internationally, working with a national expert such as Ray Hughes, very known as an expert in this field. Part of the programming that is taught in our schools is to help young people to learn and also work with others within the school system to deal with the bullying and to address issues that are also related to part of the gender issues. So, we work very closely with those experts in their fields. Mahsi.

When I met with CKLB and the NCS chair, I offered, from my department, a financial accountant to deal with their bookkeeping challenges, their debt load that we’re aware of. So, the offer is on the table with the board chair and also to deal with the board members. It is at their discretion if they want to take advantage of that, but we offered that. We are offering as much support as we possibly can, as a department, to the organization because we want them to be back up and running. That’s what we’re offering at this point. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When it comes to the safety of our school children, that is a priority of this department, working with the DEAs and DECs. The Safe and Caring Schools Initiative, obviously supporting schools and teachers in developing tools needed to create such an environment and we do also have a working group. It deals with all the partners, the parents, the educators, administrators in our school system. Even at the DEAs and DECs and they also work very closely with all the education authorities to make sure that they’re complying with all the safety rules and regulations.

So it is a...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Again, when the decision was made October 30, 2014, it was decided that we would continue with rolling out of junior kindergarten in 19 communities, based on the feedback that we received, and 18 the following year, not to proceed with the second and third phases and to continue with re-profiled funds from education councils. That was the decision that we went with.

Last year, 2014-15, it cost us approximately $1.8 million. In 2015-16 it will be approximately $1.3 million. That was the decision that was made by our government to move forward. That is what we’re doing, unless...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is new from what we’ve heard. When we had the Aboriginal Languages Symposium we heard from various stakeholders and the general public that we need to do something about our language preservation and revitalization. They wanted us to have a system in place similar to the Languages Bureau that we had back in the 1990s. This is a similar set-up where we have an associate director in that position in the past, a director of official languages, and having a couple key staff within the museum to work very closely with the language groups. We also provide funding directly...