Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I first became aware of this issue as the Member was making his statement and what I can tell the Member is that, in fact, senior officials from the department here are in contact with the DEC. We are aware of the situation and we are attempting to locate teachers as we speak until at least the end of the school year. We will see what happens with the medical emergency that my colleague mentioned and we are going to be making every effort to try to find from a rapidly shrinking pool, mind you, of teachers, to go in to fill in as soon as we possibly can so that, in fact, there is no loss of any educational time in the community. Thank you.

David Krutko Mackenzie Delta

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am glad to hear that from the Minister, but I would like to get some assurances from the Minister that the individuals that they do send into the community are qualified and do have their doctorate in education, or whatnot, so we do have qualified teachers in the community to assist at this time.

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is a fast-breaking issue. My latest note is, in fact, that there are a couple of teachers being interviewed tonight about possibly going up to the community. We are hopeful that we can get teachers in there in the next day or so to address this issue. I will make a commitment, as well, to keep the Member fully apprised of all and any developments that are happening in this regard, now that I am aware of it. Thank you.

David Krutko Mackenzie Delta

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in regard to this incident, which is an emergency, I believe that no one knew that this would happen, I would like to ask the Minister since the community was without a principal and a teacher for two weeks, does the department have a policy to deal with such emergencies, so when there is an incident such as this in Tsiigehtchic that the government can respond a lot faster to fill in these vacancies?

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I must confess I am not aware of a policy, if one exists. I know that our intent is that when an emergency arises we bring all of our resources and forces to bear to try to deal with it. We do not have a pool of teachers that we can just tap into that are on a sort of casual substitute basis, unfortunately, but the department, like all departments in the government, wants to respond as quickly and expediently as it can to any emergency that arises, such as this. Thank you.

David Krutko Mackenzie Delta

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe this is an incident where I would suggest maybe we consider, or the Minister considers, looking at such a policy so that when other emergencies do occur in the future that this department is prepared and ready to deal with the incident, and that we have some contingency plans in place so that we are able to react a lot sooner.