Wendy Bisaro

Thanks to the Minister for that update. That’s good to hear. I know there are difficulties with dealing with the federal law, so I’m glad to hear that it’s on the radar and hopefully it will happen in the next couple of years.

I wanted to ask the Minister a question about inclusive schooling. It’s been a hot topic in the last couple of weeks, but in the Minister’s opening remarks he spoke to the department is working with education authorities to improve the delivery of student supports provided under the Inclusive Schooling program, and at the end of the paragraph he said it will help us build...

Thanks to the deputy minister. I’m struggling to understand why we would offer a program that doesn’t really provide us with the qualified people that we are looking for to run our early childhood development programs, so I’ll leave that as a statement. Can I be advised when the decision will be made whether or not to go ahead with a higher quality program in the fall?

Thanks to the Minister for that response. I appreciate, and gather from his response, we don’t currently have anything that recognizes sort of magnet community schools and the needs that they have. I’m really pleased to hear that that is something that the department is considering.

Similar to that, some schools obviously end up with more special needs students than others. Some end up with students with much higher needs than others. That ends up putting an extra financial burden on either a board or a school.

I’d like to know from the Minister if, at this point in time, our funding formula...

Mr. Chair, to where these contributions would show up in the budget? Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I’ll sneak the last question in. So we really don’t have much of a profile in terms of heritage. The NWT Arts Council, I presume it’s called an arts council. So I presume that they don’t and their description doesn’t say much about grants for heritage. So there are donations for heritage centres, but that tends to be the operations of the centres themselves. So in terms of programming, it sounds to me as though the only funding in this budget for programming is cultural projects, which is $36,000. Am I correct in that? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. That accounts for, sort of, the actual money that they’re spending, but they’re spending the money to achieve certain results and standards, I would hope.

I would like to know from the Minister, he’s heard a lot from Members about the inequality of graduating students, the level of education that students graduate with. I want to just ask this question because I often wonder about it. Who is responsible for the quality of the results in our K to 12 education? Is it the education authorities or is it the department?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to ask some questions about the inclusive schooling funding formula. The Minister has heard Members talk about the problems with the inclusive schooling formula and the way that inclusive schooling is provided. Boards are underfunded, many of them, and the formula basically is not working. I think the current percentage applied across the board to our education authorities is inappropriate.

I would like to ask the Minister initially, what does the department do to evaluate how...

Mr. Chair, thanks to the Minister. I wanted to ask, within this section there are two funds which I don’t know whether or not it’s included here. One of them is the Mine Training Society and the other one is Skills Canada. I can’t find, within this section, where either of those organizations’ contributions are listed. Can I get some clarification? Thank you.

Mr. Chair, thanks to the director. That’s helpful.

In terms of culture and heritage, I know I suggested to the Minister, in my statement last week, that we could give a higher profile to heritage than we do. We have a Minister’s Cultural Circle, but I’d like to ask the Minister specifically whether or not he would entertain a name change to those awards, if he would call it the Minister’s Cultural and Heritage Circle, just adding the word “heritage” in there. Thank you.

Thanks for the information. So if our enrolments have gone down, I note that the total funding to schools has actually gone up by about $1 million. If enrolments are down, we have fewer staff from one year to the next, why is the budget going up?