Mr. Nerysoo.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a number of issues that have to be considered in responding to the honourable Member's comments. Number one, the strategy that is being developed will, in fact, allow for that kind of discussion to take place in terms of the role of parents in educational programming and meeting the programming and service needs of our children. The other issue is that the Brighter Futures funding which the federal government has provided to this jurisdiction will allow us to access some resources and allow aboriginal people to access program funding for that particular purpose.

Another initiative that I believe is very successful, and perhaps because it became a real important factor in the success of the Arviat school, is the whole concept of introducing child care programming in high schools. I think, while we have to work with our parents to have them encourage their young children to remain in school, we also have to recognize that there are young people who are having children in many of the communities where we don't have those parenting skills that they should have because they are having children at such a young age. I think it is incumbent upon us to introduce programs that will allow them to become good parents despite their age, and allow them to take on the responsible position that the honourable Member has pointed out. That is to encourage their young children on how important education is in terms of the success of their children. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Nerysoo. Mr. Patterson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess it is always a bit dangerous for our Minister of Education to get too involved in this debate, but I do have some comments I want to make, some plaudits to offer the Minister before I raise my concerns. I want to say, generally, that I think this is the key department mainly because of Nunavut, from the point of view of my constituents. I think we have always said if Nunavut has to be run by people from the good city of Yellowknife, or even worse people from southern Canada, then we are going to turn around very quickly in April 1999 and say why did we do this? Nunavut is to bring government closer to home and to involve northern people as never before in their government. I think the Minister of Education has the most critical portfolio for the next decade, if it hasn't been critical up until now. It is the most important.

This is a very imperfect list, but there are some good things that have happened. I am sure I may miss some. I think that the day care policy is now being seriously reviewed and can only be improved. I am pleased with the profile that has been given to this long neglected issue by this department since it has taken over the responsibility. I want to note that the location of an officer in the region has been of tremendous assistance, not just to my constituents but to others. I want to note that as progress. There's a lot of interest in the new policy and I think a lot of good advice has already been given to the department.

I think the changes in the teacher education program to basically make what has already worked in the Baffin region apply to other regions is great. We are going to see the impact soon. This is the best way of dealing with the issue of aboriginal culture and languages in our schools, to get trained aboriginal people from our communities in those schools as role models and teaching whatever is being taught with sensitivity and preferably in the aboriginal language, where it is a priority in that community. I think good progress has been made already. The results in the Keewatin are astonishing. If we can clone that process in other regions it will have an untold positive impact.

The commitment to grade extensions is a good one. I know the Minister has suffered some criticism about closing Akaitcho Hall and about some of the other problems that have resulted with grade extensions, but I'm confident it's the right way to go. It, too, will produce dividends. It is already producing dividends. Without appearing to be biased towards the Baffin, I think the Baffin has led the way in this area. We now see success in communities like Igloolik, Pangnirtung, Pond Inlet and even now Sanikiluaq. It is the way to go. It has worked in the Baffin and it will work in other places. There will be some hiccoughs, but it is the way to go. I congratulate the department for squeezing the necessary funds out of the miserly Minister of Finance to make this continue to happen because I know it is difficult to get new money these days.

The Minister has achieved an historic first in actually engineering a bussing policy. I congratulate him for that. It is something that has been tried by others before and has failed. Now, having given him some praise -- I don't want to give him too much praise -- I want to say that he did the politically smart thing and passed the buck on to the divisional boards. I noticed that but I congratulate him because at least there is a policy in place to deal with this area where demands will never cease. I think it is good that some money has been allocated and it is obviously an issue in many communities.

First of all, I'm very concerned about the apparent federal cutbacks in skills training in the Northwest Territories and Canada and I want to ask the Minister a little about that, perhaps when we get to that area of his budget. I'm specifically wondering where the federal money has gone. Has it been reallocated or has it been snatched? I would like to have the benefit of the Minister's understanding of that.

Secondly, I would like to say that the investing in people program looks great. It is in tune with national trends and is in tune with what has apparently worked successfully in New Brunswick. But my concern is this, I don't think we're going to see any results from this new initiative this coming fiscal year. Training for Nunavut, especially, was required to happen yesterday. I'm not sure that the delay in getting the investing in people program going -- which is necessary, I understand, to get a new program designed -- coupled with apparent reductions in overall core funding for Arctic College, is going to lead to progress in the coming fiscal year for education through the college for those other than the K to 12 population.

I would like to say that, in my experience, K to 12 has always been the sexy side of Education. It has always been an area that has been the subject of attention in committee of the whole. It's very important, of course, but it is often that K to 12 get the lion's share of funding and attention and we fail to support the equally important, if not more important, college, post-secondary and adult training responsibilities that we have.

I realize, Mr. Chairman, that the college is reorganizing. There is preoccupation now with new legislation. There are going to be two boards and all of this has to be done by July. I understand that. I also understand the amalgamation of the Science Institute is preoccupying people in the Minister's department who are dealing with Arctic College. These are important initiatives and they have to be done. But I'm wondering if this is only going to be a year for reorganization or whether the college can keep moving and can be there, ready and waiting to respond to the increasing pressures to train people for Nunavut.

So I will have some questions for the Minister about that. Specifically, I would like to ask him about -- and maybe this will be my closing comment, Mr. Chairman -- the Standing Committee on Finance recommendation of February 24, 1994 -- and I think it was approved by the committee of the whole -- that the department provide a detailed report on the anticipated impact on programs of the reduced 1994-95 budget allocation to the college. The committee further recommended that the report be provided prior to the department's main estimates being considered in committee of the whole.

I'm not aware, Mr. Chairman, whether that information has yet been provided to the committee or the House. I would like to ask the Minister if that information can be provided. I would also like to ask if it is a fair criticism to say that the college budget seems to be reduced. Comparing the mains from the previous year to this year, it looks like a reduction. If this is true -- and it may not be true -- it seems ironic that with land claims being implemented with the Gwich'in and the Sahtu, with the pressures of development in the Mackenzie Valley in the western Arctic with mining prospects and other development pressures in which northerners want to participate and with Nunavut coming, that this is the very year when it seems that overall global funding to the college is declining. When you add the hit of the federal reduction in skills training, it looks even more serious. I know this is something beyond the Minister's direct control, but that is a strong concern I would like to mention here and ask a response on.

I'll just mention a couple of other issues relating to the college, Mr. Chairman, and I think I can bring them up at the appropriate time. One is student housing, particularly married student housing. There is a critical need and I know it is a capital issue but it can be an O and M issue if the department is willing to look at leasing or making other arrangements to make this housing available to our most mature students. These are the people who succeed. They have been out of school, had a few children, perhaps have been in the work place, but they are ready to go back to school. They have stability through their families and there is a huge waiting list at Nunatta Campus for this kind of housing. I suspect it is true of other campuses, but I don't really know for sure. I suspect it is a problem in Inuvik, Cambridge Bay and perhaps even Thebacha. I think it is a critical issue that has to be dealt with.

The other issue I would like to mention is nursing training. I know the department and the college have made a good start with the program that is up and running now in Yellowknife. I wish to commend the department for that. I would like to see what we have been able to do with educators duplicated in the health professions, beginning with nursing. My big concern is, even though there was a high degree of interest in nursing and the nursing professions identified in the survey that was conducted before this program was established from students in the Baffin, Keewatin and Kitikmeot regions, they don't have access to that program unless they go to Yellowknife. I think our experience over the years has been, it doesn't work very well to expect people to travel that far from home and family to access this program. So, I am going to want to ask the Minister about that issue and what plans are in place to give the other regions of the territories access to this very important program.

Those are a couple of issues that I want to explore as we go into the details, Mr. Chairman. I wonder, in closing, if I could ask the Minister to comment on this global issue of funding to the college and to tell this committee whether we will get a detailed report on the anticipated impact on programs of what appears to be reduced funding to the college before we finally deal with this budget. Thank you.

Mr. Minister, that was notice of quite a few questions which you can expect as you do your homework over the next little while, but the specific question that Mr. Patterson has asked is about funding for adult education.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the problems that I think people have when you review budgets and when there is a need for us to respond to the potential for deficits, is that we have to find resources where it is, in our view, most appropriate to reduce. In that context, the resources that have been identified to respond to what would have been and still could be a serious financial problem for us, we were able to identify in this particular area. I don't like to be difficult, but let's be very honest about the million dollars that the honourable Member is talking about which has been

identified for cost-sharing with the federal government. The federal government removed their million dollars. As a result of that, there is no cost-sharing right now with the federal government.

In the investing in people, which is the $4.5 million that we are looking at over the next three years, which will increase the total number of dollars spent by $3.5 million, those dollars are to be cost-shared with the federal government moving toward signing arrangements, agreements with the federal government to implement that particular program. While the honourable Member is correct in saying that we have removed the money, we are still moving to implement programs that would cost up to $4.5 million for college programming.

The other important consideration that Members must have, and we must continue to remind ourselves, is that there are already training dollars that have been made available to aboriginal organizations through the claims agreements. If we can work in partnership with the aboriginal organizations, we can access some of those dollars to deliver actual training programs to the aboriginal people.

If I may go back to one experience that we had -- and I keep mentioning this one -- is with the Gwich'in. The Gwich'in themselves wanted to proceed with a business program with the University of Lethbridge. Through Arctic College, I intervened in that process. What was interesting is they had already spent $70,000 of development money on trying to develop the program with the University of Lethbridge, which they really, in my view, didn't have to do. We could have worked it out through the Arctic College and would have used that $70,000 to actually deliver the program. They have agreed, through Arctic College and in conjunction with the University of Lethbridge, that we would deliver that program through the Aurora Campus in Inuvik. My view is that we can work with the other aboriginal organizations to deliver programming. We can, as the honourable Member has stressed so many times in the House, use Arctic College as a vehicle for delivering post-secondary community-based training programs. I think it is the best vehicle available to us. I think we should continue to promote that as the institution of training.

The other element is that there are already available opportunities for us to access training educational dollars under the CAP 3 for which we have already submitted proposals to the federal government from communities that will allow us to train various communities, and to utilize CAP 3 money in ways other than social assistance or welfare payments. The possibilities are there.

The other issue is that we should access the unemployment insurance program much better than we have been accessing it previously and utilizing those resources. It is my view that we will be able to access more resources.

On the matter of Arctic College, we have invested $1 million in the decision to separate and have two colleges in the north. The names will end up as Arctic College, Nunavut and Arctic College West. Those decisions have been made.

On the matter of the nursing program, I think we don't disagree with the honourable Member's comments that we should make it as accessible as a teacher education program but, like every other program, my honourable Member will recall how difficult the initial decisions were to move the teacher education program to the community-based program. We needed some additional experiences. I think, without any question, we can use that experience in the health programs. It is our first year of delivering the access year for the nursing program. I think from that we will develop some additional experiences that we might be able to promote access programs in the various campuses. It all costs dollars and we have to look at the program in terms of the resources that we have at hand.

The honourable Member made mention of the fact that we may not be able to access the dollars. The federal government has announced two particular programs, one for $200 million and the other for $800 million over the next three years. We can access those dollars immediately, at the earliest opportunity for various pilot projects that we might be able to consider in terms of training and education. It is going to take us some time but I think that we can access those dollars this upcoming fiscal year. The criteria and the basis by which we are going to utilize those resources is an issue that is being discussed right now between the Ministers. I have had an opportunity, as the honourable Member will note, to make a statement in the House indicating a number of the issues that we have to address. We are moving on those, and we are trying to respond to the concerns that the honourable Member has raised.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I received more answers than I expected. I appreciate that. I would like to get back to my perhaps naive question about the college budget, and I would like to ask the Minister for a simple answer. From the point of view of GNWT contributions to the college, is the budget less in the coming fiscal year compared to the previous year?

I am not sure how I can answer that question because the allocation made to the program, which was cut by the feds, was based on the fact of cost-sharing. What we are now doing under the investing in people initiative is, in fact, cost-sharing, not a million dollars but $4.5 million. So, the fact is that if we get an arrangement with the federal government, the dollars will go up. But it depends on what the arrangements are.

Mr. Chairman, I am very excited about these new federal programs. There is Brighter Futures. There is Ethel Blondin-Andrew's Youth Corps or whatever it is called. There is CAP 3. There is a new program announced every time Lloyd Axworthy has a press conference, it seems. I am excited about this, and I hope that we get our fair share. I hope we get more than our fair share in light of the priority we place on education.

I would just like to ask the Minister what I think is a simple question. Putting aside the federal government, on which I know we are very heavily dependent, is the projected GNWT contribution to Arctic College for the coming year less than what was spent last year? That is my question. Thank you.

Yes.

(Translation) Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wish to thank the Minister for his initiative on education in the Northwest Territories. I understand that this is the most difficult department to deal with and I appreciate his work done in the Northwest Territories, particularly in the Baffin region. I know that O and M for the schools in the regions is always small, but we can understand that, in light of all the budget cuts by the federal government. However, I wanted to comment on a few items.

In the fall of 1985, I went to Lake Shore for a training program. While I was down there for training, I became aware of how a program is easily run in the southern institutions. I was having great difficulty in my training program due to the fact that I couldn't speak English. It was very difficult for me to be able to speak and participate in that classroom setting due to the fact that I was unilingual. I know all the negative impacts that can have on a unilingual person. I wanted to bring that up just to let you know that we have come a long way in the Baffin region with regard to education and training.

I was also a member of the divisional board of education in the Baffin region, and we had to deal a lot with the curriculum that was put in the schools at the time. This has helped a great deal in the curriculum area.

We all know that education is very important to us and it is becoming more and more difficult to get funding for various training programs. However, we have been trying hard to better our lives and the future for the younger generation and we encourage the younger students to stay in school so that they can have better opportunities in the future.

I don't want to dwell on the negative impacts of schooling and what kind of impacts they can have on married students' families. However, I can see positive impacts on it also. These are the comments that have been put forth, as well.

People were dealing with the fact that the parents have to be more involved in their children's schooling and I appreciate that fact. I also want to encourage other parents to be fully involved in the schooling area, particularly in the smaller communities, because we all know that education is a very important part of our lives, whether we come from smaller or larger centres.

I also wanted to let people within the Legislative Assembly know that we are trying to deal with education, with the resources we have, to the best of our abilities.

In dealing with another subject here, schools were allocated some funding quarterly and we had to deal with proposals every three months or so. The divisional boards of education had to put out proposals every three months and this was causing a little bit of difficulty in our board. However, I wanted to ask a question to the Minister. When you allocate a certain amount of funding for three months, and I am not trying to look at just the Baffin region, we have to put this money into a bank so that it could collect interest for the Inuktitut curriculum in the schools in the Baffin region. This has helped us a great deal in the curriculum area. We have also had to hire a staff member to make up the curriculum.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One decision that was made prior to me becoming Minister, and I think it is important, because some of the results are beginning to show, first with the Dene Kede curriculum and I think with the Inuqatigiit curriculum which deals with the Inuit culture and language. There has been a real need for us to develop and deliver a basic curriculum. That's not to suggest that each region shouldn't implement their own ideas within that curriculum, but there has to be basic curriculum available.

I think that will alleviate some of the individual expenditures that have been made separately by divisional boards because with the development of the aboriginal curriculum, we have found that the divisional boards are working together to develop a core curriculum. That's very, very helpful. Another important issue in the Nunavut area, which I think should have excited a lot of people, particularly the Nunavut Members of this Assembly, is that for the first time all the divisional boards got together. The chairs of those divisional boards got together to begin talking about the direction of education in Nunavut for the younger children.

They also take a great deal of interest in post-secondary programming because they don't feel post-secondary training can be offered in isolation of high school programming or elementary school. You need children to go through the school system in order to graduate and meet the standards set by Arctic College in Nunavut. I think that is very, very important. I'm very excited about the way things are beginning to work in Nunavut. I think we all should be because the leadership of education has come together now and I think you're going to see some exciting things being developed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, looking at the departmental overview of the department's budget and the definitive objectives of the department, I'm very pleased to note that there are language programs and services within the system. Culture and heritage are still included. College, university, other programs and other training programs, which are very important to the people of the NWT

,

are still in there and career and income support programs are very important as well.

I would like to share this comment with my colleagues and also remind the Minister not to lose sight of those people who really need this program. This legislature should really look at this because the generation who are not yet of school age may have some special needs in the future. I think this is very, very important for people who are going to be at a disadvantage. I would like to remind the Minister and my colleagues that we should really look at this seriously. It doesn't matter who you are, whether you're in Nunavut, the Dene communities or in others, if you have a problem, you need the help of the legislators in the system.

Mr. Chairman, another important point I would like to bring to the attention of the Minister is day care programs within the system. Since education is a priority within the Department of Education and also of this government, I think we should try to make sure that people who were at a disadvantage during the time they were growing up and were not able to attend school for one reason or another, once they grow up and would like to get better education, they should be able to do so. Most times, they are women who are not able to get it because of a situation they are in. Either they're single mothers or are not able to get a babysitter. That should be addressed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to note, Mr. Chairman, I take the comments that the honourable Member has made seriously and that other Members have made in this House. If the Member will recall, when we were making the presentation of Towards a Strategy to 2010, there was an indication that we are presently funding about 11 per cent of our needs for special needs education. The percentage requiring our assistance runs around 25 per cent to possibly 30 per cent in some locations. It was also indicated that it was the one area that needed to be addressed in the final documentation of our strategy. We think it's important. Mr. Chairman, it is also an issue that is being addressed in part two of our funding review for schools across the Northwest Territories, so that matter is under consideration at the moment.

There is not much I can disagree about with the honourable Member on the matter of child care programming or early childhood care and development. I think it's necessary for us to ensure that we provide the most accessible program possible. I'm not sure if we can do it in every situation or that we can respond to all the requirements. Maybe there are options available. I think the symposium really pointed out to us that there is certainly a need for us to be more flexible in how we provide financing to parents. Not all parents or communities will agree that a central day care centre is the best idea. They may be more in favour of single child care situations or community programming. I don't have any problems or concerns about that. I take it very seriously and I think the success of our child care programs in our high schools are beginning to show very good results. I think we will continue to promote that concept, particularly if the parenting programs are all part of the courses that are being delivered. It only teaches young people to be better parents. That is what we need, for sure.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we should really look after our staff, who are doing an excellent job in providing education within the system, not only in teaching, but in communicating with parents as well. I have no problem in my community. The school principals are working very hard. I know that all of the school principals in the territories are working equally hard. I would like to note that we should provide the best benefit package to our teachers that we can in the system. Within the last two or three years now, teachers have been very concerned about their staff housing, rent, et cetera. I think we should really try to keep that in mind. It is not only the parent who provides education, the ability for the student to come out with a good education comes from the teacher, initially. Are we trying to take something away from the teachers and yet we expect that they will produce a good quality education for our children? We should keep that in mind. Thank you.