Robert Hawkins

The Minister says it takes a community, but it also takes leadership at the Minister’s office. What is the Minister doing to engage the students to find out what types of incentives they need to be partners in their own future? Not just the parents, not just the district education authorities and not just everybody in the ivory tower at the buildings downtown.

What are the students being talked to and engaged about? What it would take for them to want to graduate? Is the Minister doing that outreach and what is the outreach determining?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to ask a question. My question will be to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment just to help build a little further on our theme day for education, Mr. Speaker. First I should say, once again, thank you to the Bureau of Stats for their great assistance in helping me with this question because their details, I couldn’t live without.

In 2012-13 in grades 10 to 12 we had 2,582 students enrolled. However, current details tell us that only 437 students graduated. That’s approximately 50 percent if we just work the math through and...

Again, I appreciate the answer from the Minister, but we’ve got a bit of a trend here where some of our employees, be it at Stanton or at some of the downtown offices, and not only recently but there has been over a number of months in a couple of years that the staff have been in jeopardy or some type of peril because of these types of incidents. Rather than waiting for the occupational health and safety committee to make its recommendation or even to meet for goodness sakes, what proactive approach is the Minister of Human Resources doing and directing through policy to ensure our employees...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll have questions for the Minister of Human Resources right now. We’ve all been made well aware of the experience and certainly the security issues that have happened around Stanton Hospital where many of our staff have come under some scares due to a security issue. My fear, of course, is that Stanton may be more of a symptom of problems as opposed to a particular one. Rather than focusing strictly in on Stanton, which would probably be a mistake at this particular time, I want to look broadly across our public service and ask the Minister of Human Resources what...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the UN, had said, “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” I couldn’t agree more. I really believe education is the true future before us. It’s one we can write and help others write their own future.

I once again call upon this government to take a hard look at what it’s doing to the future of education. We’ve all heard about the travesty of its plan on junior kindergarten, not thought out, well-conceived and believed in, but yet not thought out....

Mr. Speaker, I’m not hearing anything from that last answer that specifically points to what they’re doing. The Minister said there are so many initiatives. Name clearly one initiative that is engaged with the students to find out what’s important to them to encourage them to proceed towards graduation.

This is such an important thing that our students get a graduation certificate, because their future counts on it. We can only go backwards so far and hope and dream and pray and plead with them that they graduate, but we must get them involved in this solution.

Name one clear thing that the...

The Minister just said he would hope for 80 percent. Well, actually, I hope we have 100 percent graduation rates. Unlike the Minister had just said, I hope that every child has the future and that they work through graduation. You can’t get a job with the military or the RCMP these days that people used to go through with grades 10, 11 and 12. You need a minimum of Grade 12.

The specific question to the Minister of Education is: What incentives are put in through the education program to encourage our youth to fulfil their obligation by getting through the education system and all the way to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the Minister for that because this lack of safety trend is quite alarming and it’s not just about one facility, it’s about all our territorial staff. I’m going to quote Minister Abernethy’s comment the other day, “Our staff are the most valuable resources. They are the backbone of our system and we need to ensure that.” I want to make sure that the Minister is very clear on exactly what he’s going to do and when we’re going to do it, because I don’t want to wait for yet another incident to happen for anyone to be standing by and saying I told you so. We...

With this recent trend of incidents at Stanton or even downtown in some of our offices or anywhere else, for that matter, there’s been a bit of a trend. Has this not stimulated the need for this type of discussion to ensure that our employees are safe, and as such, what about the government taking initiative on doing an assessment to ensure our staff are not only safe but have the proper resources at their beck and call as and when necessary?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll just speak briefly. A few weeks ago I raised the issue of wanting to see further support from the department through the Arctic Energy Alliance for doors and windows. Since that time I’ve learned that there is an extremely small, I wouldn’t want to even call it meagre because that would sound like there’s something, but there is an extreme sliver of support for insulation, and I think we could be doing a lot more. I have yet to hear back from the Minister as to what the department plans to do or how they plan to move forward on that initiative.

Again, as I talked...