Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a few questions or points of clarification on the definitive objectives. Under directorate and administration, the second from the last objective is to develop a directive on hiring teachers. I'm just curious, is there not a policy in place? Is this an amendment to an existing policy? If that's the case, are there problems currently in the recruiting policy for teachers? Thank you.

Could I ask Mr. Gerein to respond to that specific question, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is to develop a comprehensive guideline for all the boards to use in their hiring, documentation and evaluation processes with respect to teachers. Currently it is quite fragmented because it has been handed over in pieces and also isn't comprehensive. Thank you.

So would you say there are problems in the recruitment process because of the fact that it is fragmented and not standardized? Thank you.

We have found some problems where there has been inadequate documentation, a lack of collaboration or advance notice between the board and the Department of Personnel. It has sometimes put us in a jam with respect to actually doing teacher recruitment in appropriate time frames. Thank you.

My second question is under educational development, on page 18-8, it says, "To complete the implementation of the new senior secondary science curriculum for the grade 12 level." Is that throughout the NWT where there is grade 12 or plans to create grade 12 programming?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Alberta changed their science curriculum a year ago. We began the introduction of that new science program this year. This upcoming year, we will complete the implementation of all components of that new curriculum.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Are there going to be additional resources required because of this new curriculum? If so, have those resources been identified yet?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There will be some minor resource requirements and they are included in the allocation in this budget.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My next question is relating to the school community counsellors and the training of the 14 additional school community counsellors. Are there no standards currently in place for training of these school community counsellors?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could I ask the honourable Member to clarify the matter of the standards? Generally speaking, the training of the counsellors is similar no matter which jurisdiction or what region you are from. In other words, it is the same curriculum. So perhaps he could explain that to me.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is a training program in existence for school community counsellors. What type of training would encompass this training program for these counsellors? I am not aware of it in my region.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand now and I have spoken to my deputy minister. If the honourable Member will recall, some years ago we began the student counselling program. We started it, we stopped it, we started it and we stopped it. Now we are starting it again. We realize there is a need for student community counsellors in our schools. This is the beginning of our retraining program again. We are bringing in some new trainees and counsellors to train. Over the next three years, it is our intention to train an additional 30 new school counsellors for our schools.