R.J. Simpson

Sure. Well, I appreciate the comments from all the Members. And the Member's correct, it takes the whole community, needs to be involved and engaged in education. The government can't do it alone, absolutely not, so. And I will say that the Member's correct. In Fort Smith, they do value education. They have a lot of longterm educators who are able to mentor a lot of the younger educators that come in and so they don't run into the same issues that you might see in the smaller community where your whole staff, you know, has one or two years of experience. So they are you know, they're lucky...

Thank you. There has been a lot of work done so we're not trying to reinvent the wheel as the deputy minister alluded to. What we are doing is going to pursue the renovations through the normal capital process. So Members will have a chance to get that information through that process. There's nothing that is shareable right now really beyond what the deputy minister has stated. Thank you.

Thank you. And of course we get most of our money from the federal government. In particular, we do get money specifically for the student financial assistance program. We receive $5.6 million from the federal government. They have the Canada Student Loans Program that we opted out of in order to be able to offer these types of customized programs to our residents. And because we opted out, we get that money from the federal government and we contribute GNWT funds as well. Thank you.

It is fully subscribed.

Thank you. So, again, with the changes to the income assistance program, we want to make the reporting less onerous so that it frees up time for the clients and for the client service officers so that eventually we hope they will have more time to work with the clients. I know that the Tlicho region is a very busy region when it comes to the workload for the CSOs and because of that, they don't have time to spend with the clients. So we're looking at increasing the number of positions there as well at some point in the very near future. So the Member can look forward to that. And the whole...

Thank you. On my left is the deputy minister John MacDonald. And on my right is the assistant deputy minister of corporate services, Sam Shannon. Thank you.

Thank you. And we have been underspending the SFA budget for years, and it's sort of common across Canada. We've seen lower numbers of students so that allowed us to make some enhancements beyond the $1.4 million here. And, you know, if it comes to the point where there's so much uptake that we're overspending this, then we're overspending it and we'll have to increase the budget. It's a great problem to have. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll hand it to the deputy minister.

Thank you. I don't have that information. We do try to track that. I can provide the information that we do have to committee. But I don't have it on hand here. But the Member makes a good point. That's important. Data collection is always difficult in all the areas that we do our work, which makes it difficult to design and evaluate programs. But we are getting better, and I believe we do have some information that the Member will find useful and we will share it with her. Thank you.

Yes, I do. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am here to present the Department of Education, Culture and Employment’s main estimates for the fiscal year 20232024. Overall, the department's estimates propose an increase of approximately $24 million or 6.7 percent over the Main Estimates 20222023. These estimates support the mandate objectives while continuing to meet the GNWT's fiscal objectives to prioritize responsible and strategic spending.

Highlights of these proposed estimates include $16.9 million to support new initiatives. The amount is comprised of:

$10.326 million in additional federal...