Julie Green

Mr. Chair, we have a problem, in that we don’t have a hard copy of the bill. The binders are no longer present. Could we be advised of where to find the copy of the bill?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am tabling three documents today. The first is the letter from the Association of Social Workers in Northern Canada to all Members of this House concerning the decision to phase out the social work program at Aurora College; the second is a letter from the Canadian Association of Social Workers to the federal Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour on the same issue; and the third is a news release from the Canadian Association of Social Workers expressing its concern on this topic. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My concern is that putting programs into abeyance is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy for their extinction, meaning that, if instructors and students know that the program has a finite life, they won't continue on with it. They will move on to something else. Can the Minister assure us that this one year abeyance will in fact only be one year?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my final question is: is the department prepared to reverse this reduction in instructional hours if the pilot isn't successful, using those student and teacher outcomes? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for his answer. Can he give us an indication, of the 49 schools, how many schools have opted out?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, colleagues. As I was saying, the teachers said they work 52 hours a week, but the sample size is very small, because only 15 per cent of teachers took part in the survey. Surely there are more effective ways to measure teacher wellness, including their sick days, long-term disability, and retention in the profession. It would also be useful to see data on these points from jurisdictions with fewer instructional hours.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister has yet to produce a solid evidence-based rationale for these changes to instructional hours. I am challenging him...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, just a month ago, I stood here and noted the obvious. We Regular MLAs were at an impasse on budget negotiations with Cabinet. Today, we have a resolution which will pave the way for passage of the budget appropriation bill. It's a compromise we all worked hard on.

Mr. Speaker, it's important to note that we are not all of one mind about budget 2017. We have made some progress on the size of the cuts the Finance Minister originally proposed. They have gone down by a third, from $150 million to $100 million. That, in itself, is an achievement. Regular MLAs...

I appreciate the Minister's good intentions, but he is scolding these students like they are bad children. What we have here are, in the most cases, mature students coming from other communities who have lots of commitments in their lives as care for their children and their parents and so on. It is not a matter of them not sticking to it. It is a matter of them being able to engage in this work at their own pace.

What I would like to think is that the Minister isn't looking at an all-or-nothing solution, but he might look at more flexibility, as he wants in the grade school system, to ensure...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also have a question about this Aurora College functional review. We know that the Teacher Education Program and the social work program have been put in abeyance pending the strategic planning exercise that was going on. So will these programs now be in the functional review, or is their fate going to be captured by this strategic plan? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a week ago, the Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation signed an agreement with the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation leadership about social housing. I am not questioning the need for the housing dollars, but I have some questions around the details of this arrangement.

I am aware that about a third of the new money will replace units destroyed by fire. Will the rest of the money add to the housing stock in the ISR so that there are more units in total than there are now? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.