Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It appears that my colleagues are on a roll and I am not sure I can say anything to better the suggestions already made. I would just like to make a short comment.
Basically, the Minister's opening statement talks about all of the good news. This report here talks about how to improve your policies. I think most of the points are covered there.
Mr. Chairman, I just want to indicate that generally, I am in support of the direction the department is going. I think that a lot has been done by the department and this government in the very short time of a year. I think it is worthy of celebrating.
I really feel that it is going in line with what I have in my campaign platform. I think we are doing a good job of balancing the economic development and that sort of political agenda with the need to take care of the wellness and educational needs of the people. Looking back, one of the first things we did was to amend the Education Act to allow for lower pupil-teacher ratio and more support money, which is going to take effect shortly here, starting this year.
I applaud the latest change to the Student Financial Assistance Act where the appeals will be heard by an independent body.
The Literacy Strategy speaks to the priority that the Minister and the government is placing on the importance of that issue, and $2 million is not a small amount of money.
Guaranteeing jobs for students out of nursing and teaching programs, I think the meat of this will be on how they are implemented. I think the Minister appreciates that there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure all of the details are taken care of. I think it is a statement. It is quite a moral boost for those students who are in these programs to say we appreciate you and we need you. I think that is good for the teachers who are in the system as well.
I applaud the department for working on early childhood development and the healthy children initiative. I think those are the things that successive governments have talked about, but we are beginning to see a tangible result of that. I think that those are small celebrations or big celebrations that we should recognize.
I quote from the Minister's statement here, on page 4:
"Due to an improved territorial economic situation, increased emphasis on career development and improved administrative systems, we are anticipating reduced spending in the income assistance program during the 2001-2002."
That is good news. That is great. I have lived here for 23 years. It is not usual to see a decrease in social spending. As soon as I read that, I was thinking what did you do with the money? I see that the money has been put back. It is sort of going in the direction I would like to see it go. I applaud the Minister for putting extra money to increase the disability allowance.
I do have to say that I do have some constituents who were unhappy about the fact that they were not grandfathered on the Student Financial Assistance Act. I do not think that they will ever be happy with me until I could somehow get this back for them. I am not saying that everything is perfect, but I think that we are on balance and we are going in the right direction.
Mr. Chairman, I have one point that I need to make to highlight the concern in my riding and in the city of Yellowknife. It has to do with crowded schools. I innocently thought that when we passed the legislation, the Education Act, to say that pupil-teacher ratio should be going from 18 to one to 16 to one, I actually imagined that there would be 16 students to one teacher. Then I learned last fall, as a result of what went on at J.H. Sissons, that some of these classes in grades 3 and 4 have almost up to 30 students. As you know, there was a lot of back and forth between parents, teachers and school boards, and the situation has settled a little. I learned a lot through that process. I have also spent some time at Range Lake North School with a special-ed assistant to see what it is like to take care of special-ed students.
What I learned out of this process is that we need to have a better system of identifying and evaluating students in need. I understand that out of this came, I heard in the news that Yellowknife District No. 1 is going to try to fund schools based on PTR rather than all the staff in the school combined to the student. I do not know what the formal word is, but I think that the board is looking at revisiting that formula. I understand that the board is going to make it available to the public for input.
I would, and I learned, and that I think is worth looking at.
I am sort of jumping from one to another, but I guess I somehow relate crowded schools and additional resources that are needed to the special need situation in our schools. I think a lot of parents felt there were a lot of students in their classes, especially in combined classes, that needed extra help.
They were discouraged that they could not convince them of that and there was no mechanism in place to see whether these students really needed extra help. I learned that the Yellowknife District No. 1 could only afford half-time teachers to even assess the situation.
I would really like to encourage the Minister. I have been a beneficiary of a great school system in Yellowknife and I would really like to do everything I can to protect that. I would like to ask the Minister to help the boards in any way he can, and also for the department to work out a system -- probably not just only in Yellowknife, but all through the Northwest Territories -- to have a system where we can identify, test and assess different levels of needs, of students with special needs, whether it be from FAS-FAE or from any other conditions they may have. I think that will be a challenge for us. We need to really look out to that.
Early childhood initiatives are on the prevention area, which is important, but I am talking about students who are already in the system who need to be taken care of. I do not think they can be taken care of unless we know what their needs are. I am not confident at this time that we have a system in place to know that. Those are my general comments, Mr. Chairman.