Shane Thompson

I thank the Minister for that answer. Then to the credit of the department in the regional health and social services, we have had a unique situation in the last couple of weeks here and they have done an amazing job with our tragedies, but in regard to dealing with these type of tragedies, can the Minister tell us if the department tries to utilize traditional acknowledge or healing in addressing these issues?

I will try this again. Sambaa K'e winter road. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with the tragedies that have occurred recently in my riding, and this is questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services, can he please advise this House if there are any policies or procedures in place to address tragedies that occur in small communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I think the Minister was thinking, or the deputy minister was thinking or both of them were thinking, that that was my next question, so I thank them that they are going to make that commitment next week and look forward to that presentation as we move forward. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My time is going to be up, so you may as well put me back on the list. Again, we as the government are giving the school $150 million. The problem is we are saying, here is the money, so if we get a problem, you guys have to fix it because you are not addressing it. Is the government downloading onto the schools to make the hard decisions? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was going to do it on Thursday, but I guess I will do it today and I can embarrass Briann Nelson and Hailey Sassie, both from Fort Liard, who are pages here. Briann was actually one of the individuals I was talking about who won the opportunity as part of the NEG Games team. Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So if I heard the Minister correctly, the last five years they have made this decision, so the TEP program has been 47 years they have not looked at all these numbers and they have just focused on the last five. So again, did the college actually look at their promotion and their recruitment process out there to get students in this program? Was that part of the evidence-based decision making? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. It is a funding ratio but it is still globally the Northwest Territories is funded that way. We are not going to see a junior kindergarten teacher in Wrigley. Correct? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I apologize to the Minister. Maybe I am a little off my question here. I have heard Mr. Lovely talk about the funding to the revenue is going to come from; the increase is going to come through SFA. We have seen that the college is going to increase the program costs for the social work program and the TEP program, so it's going to be an increase which is going to come from SFA. Is that going to be something that the college can just -- is that their way of collecting the money that we have got cut from the department? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am going to start with Aurora College here. When we look at Aurora College in the education program and social work program it provides immense value for the NWT residents, but it is also integral to NWT and Canada to the TRC recommendations and some of that. So I guess my first question coming to this is: were the cuts an evidence-based decision? So was there evidence of that besides the numbers? Did they look at it and look at all the valuations and all the recommendations and make an evidence-based decision? Thank you, Mr. Chair.