Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, next Thursday, here at the Legislative Assembly, a completion ceremony will be held for those adult students who have completed programs at the Literacy outreach Centre. Now, there were 39 students enrolled this past winter semester. It will be the 28th year that such a completion ceremony is held, but there's a danger it may be the last.
The Literacy Outreach Centre was a partnership involving Aurora College and Inclusion NWT. Aurora College decided, for reasons that are hard to understand, to shut down the centre as part of its closure of community learning centres across the territory. In our winter sitting, the Minister publicly committed in this House to provide, during the spring sitting, a critical path forward for community learning centres. I am disappointed that path hasn't been determined yet, even though today is the last day of session, and I am disappointed that we haven't spoken much in our committees or in this House about this issue.
It's easy to fall off the radar because adult learning and community-based literacy doesn't neatly fit into any of the government's boxes. When we talk about education, we usually think of the school system, college programs, or official credentials. When we talk about jobs or the economy, we think about mining development or maybe hiring and procurement policies. But we have a lot of adults in this territory who are missing some basic fundamental skills that are necessary for them to be successful in a job or a college program, not to mention being able to be self-sufficient in navigating everyday life, especially with this online world. We're talking about people who need to be fluent in reading and writing in any language, being able to make calculations and estimates with numbers, being comfortable on a computer, and being able to use the internet effectively. Even the younger generation, we often assume that at least they're computer literate, but it's worth remembering that being cell phone literate is not the same as computer literacy. And yet Aurora College's plan to move forward with basic adult education is to switch to online learning. It defies logic, Mr. Speaker.
I understand that more time is needed to find out what specific kinds of training opportunities are needed in each NWT community and to work out details about the best uses of individual buildings that Aurora College has vacated. But we still need to keep refocusing on how are we delivering the fundamentals, in every community, of language literacy, numeracy, and computer literacy? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Members' statements. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
