Thank you, Mr. Nitah. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe that we had committed to get back to the Members on that specific question. It was asked earlier by Mr. Miltenberger. We were going to address it back to him. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have a Canada-Northwest Territories Cooperation Agreement, and that is a five year agreement that was just signed very early in the year. It ties us to a five-year commitment from the federal government to provide this funding, to provide some solidity to it. I am not sure if the opportunity arises, naturally, we will do what we can in order to renegotiate that. At the moment, I cannot say that that particular agreement can be opened. If that opportunity arose, we certainly would. We do monitor the agreement.

With regard to working with the language coordinators, we are doing that now. The department does work with the language coordinators in the communities.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. I would like to remind the members there is a section coming up on education and culture, 9-17. The Chair recognizes Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just following up on the questions asked by Mr. Nitah in regards to languages. One of my areas of concern is that we do not allow enough flexibility in our classrooms, or within the aboriginal communities, to allow the aboriginal children to speak their first language instead of imposing English on them as the only language to be spoken in the classrooms. Because of that, we are putting restrictions on the abilities of these children to feel comfortable enough so they are able to learn or speak their own language within the classroom. In the Deh Cho, they are considering the possibility of having a program that allows the school to deliver curriculum solely in the South Slavey language. I think we see it in areas in the Dogrib region, in communities such as Deline and in other communities where children still have that ability.

I think we have to do more to ensure that we are not blamed for putting these barriers up because of declining numbers in official languages. I would just like to ask the Minister what is he doing to ensure the curriculum in the school reflects the cultural makeup of the communities.

Mr. Krutko, I would like to remind the Members that we are on detail. There is a section coming up on education and culture. Keep our questions on the topic. We are on section 9-9, directorate and administration. Mr. Krutko.

Just a point of clarification. I do believe I am talking on the matter. We are talking about education across the North. I am talking about a specific method of educating people. There is a whole component in this clause that talks about teachers, teacher certification, and making sure that they do carry out their responsibilities. This portfolio of the directorate is responsible for administration of the whole department, to ensure that the whole department is doing what it is mandated to do. I believe that they are mandated to develop curriculum for the particular schools. That is where my question is coming from. I am not talking about the cultural aspect. I am talking about the delivery of programs within the education system.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. I think if you went to 9-16, you would see that the topic that you are addressing would be better addressed there. However, if the Minister would like to address that here. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the question of how we support languages in the school system, we provide the Dene Kede program, the Inuuqatigiit program. We also provide to the DECs and DEAs the ability to offer a choice of aboriginal first language within the schools. There are a multitude of areas in how we address this. First of all, the DEAs and the DECs are local people elected and appointed from the communities. They have a direct input into the curriculum development and are able to input into the curriculum. We are looking at increasing our aboriginal numbers of teachers, and we have language specialists in the schools.

Our school contributions to aboriginal language and culture is $5.6 million, Mr. Chair. We have teaching-learning centres, and classroom assistants, and cultural programs. Thank you.

We have kept the Minister here for quite a while. We will take a short break. We will come back in ten minutes.

-- Break

I would like to call the committee back to order. We left off with total operations expense, $4,154,000.

Page 9-11, advanced education and careers, operations expense. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yesterday when we were talking about the Skills for Work Program, the Minister had offered to advise the House today whether or not that $650,000 was to be added to the base of the department. I was just wondering if he had that answer yet.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, it is in base funding.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Mr. Dent.

I think that is marvelous and I am glad to hear that. Mr. Chairman, each year, according to the business plan that was presented to our committee, more than 500 people move to the Northwest Territories and take professional and highly skilled technical jobs because our labour force cannot fill them at this time.

We also discussed in committee the fact that we do not have very many northern grown college instructors because very few Northerners have masters degrees which are necessary to teach college courses.

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that this is a very strong argument. Both of these areas provide strong arguments for the sort of transition measures to the new Student Financial Assistance program that the committee has been punching for. Because we need to see more people with higher levels of education.

If we are seeing 500 people come to the Northwest Territories with the unemployment rates that we have among Northerners now, it means we are missing a tremendous opportunity. We are going to continue to miss that opportunity until we start supporting our students for the time that it takes to get a graduate degree.

I hope that, given that this information is coming right from the departments business plans, that the Minister has had a chance to reconsider the transition issue and is prepared to commit that we will move to address this issue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is no doubt that the number of individuals that have been coming into the Territories to fill positions have been in the range of 500. I am not quite sure what particular positions those are.

With regard to the Member's concern with transition under the Student Financial Assistance, just to background this, we have to reflect back to how the program was established and the many changes have been made to the program.

We had extensive consultations on this. As a result of the consultations, the program was redesigned to fit the priorities. We had to make some choices about the various aspects of the programs, and we believe the choices that were made fit the priorities that were set, Mr. Chairman. Students that are going to school are going to have more money for tuition, books, and living allowances.

There will be pressures on the system because of the increased graduation rates that are potentially there from high school level moving into the system. So we will probably face a lot of pressure in the coming years for more funding to allow students to reach the graduation level, yet alone the post-graduate level. We will need money for the graduate level.

When we built the program, we took into consideration the client files and we looked at what the cost would be under the old structure. Then we did a new structure, and we did it a number of times with different permutations. We had to make sure the new program fit within the fiscal parameters that we have available to us.

As Members know, when we met in March, we also addressed the issue of the taxation of the Metis and Inuvialuit students. We added $500,000 to this particular program.

What is being asked is that we now increase the eligibility of students who already used up their entitlement in the past, and would we make those changes. As I mentioned yesterday, this program in the initial look that we have had at it and we continue to look at it, is expensive to do. It will be in the range of $1 million to $1.5 million, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes, Mr. Dent.