Shauna Morgan

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate that there's few details available right now and lots of unknowns, but does ECE plan to reach out to Aurora College and its current staff working at the literacy outreach centre, who have been informed that they will lose their jobs, but to see if an arrangement could be made, for example, to continue using the college's classroom space and to communicate the efforts underway to find a path forward for this program? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My first set of questions is for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. So the literacy outreach centre here in Yellowknife has been a partnership between Aurora College and inclusion NWT since 1997, and that program even won the Premier's Award in 2023 for its excellent results. So given that enrolment has consistently been high with 39 students in the current winter semester, it came as a shock that Aurora College recently announced it would pull out of the program as part of its closure of the community learning centres, leaving the program to be shut...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with NWT communities reeling from the news that Aurora College is giving up on community learning centres, I wanted to highlight a successful grassroots literacy and essential skills initiative for young adults that is set to expand. It is a youth employment skills partnership between the NWT Literacy Council and Ilitaqsiniq based in Nunavut and is supported by federal funding. It's designed to help youth aged 16 to 29 gain essential work skills and gain more confidence in their communication and language skills. A brandnew cohort is set to start within the...

Okay, thank you for explaining that. My understanding from some of the research we had gotten was that there is a $556,000 reduction in the budget which is an adjustment related to the planned disposition of the 51 units. Is that understanding incorrect, that -- is there to be a reduction associated with the discontinuation of the HELP program? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay, thank you, Madam Chair. Can the Minister explain -- you know, the $5 million that's been identified, it sounds like that's not nearly enough to actually do all of the repairs that would be needed. Is that amount limited because we can't find people to do the repairs? Like, is there a cap on how much we can realistically spend because we won't be able to complete the repairs, or has it just been determined that other things are more important than, you know, doing more repairs so we'll put the money somewhere else instead? Can the Minister explain, you know, why, for instance, we can't...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So Housing NWT's also identified that -- so I -- so that -- it's identified that it has over 130 vacant housing units that need to be repaired and need funding for that repair. Can the Minister explain how much has been allocated so far to try to repair those 130 vacant units and if more is being allocated this coming fiscal year. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. To attempt to follow up on my colleague's line of questioning there, I understand that -- and first, is the time going to restart there? The time is ticking away.

I understand that Housing NWT needs to hold on to a minimum amount of internal resources to ensure that it manages payroll and contractor payments. But my understanding is that above and beyond that, Housing NWT has identified net financial assets that are available for reinvestment. Is the Minister able to tell us what was the total net financial assets that were available for reinvestment as of March 31st...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Does the Minister have a role in at least communicating with the college the importance of offering courses like this in communities to make them more accessible as opposed to requiring people to go to campus communities, or is that outside the Minister's role and solely the purview of the Aurora College board of directors? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I'll leave it there for now, and I think it will be a really important discussion that's coming up when we get Aurora College directly in the room to chat with them. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Continuing a little bit along that line in terms of the transfer -- or the allocation of funding given to Aurora College, so last year we -- this Assembly provided an extra half a million dollars to Aurora College to support the transformation process to a polytechnic. Does the Minister know what we have to show for the half a million dollars that was given in the last fiscal year in terms of what progress has been made by Aurora College? Thank you, Madam Chair.