Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me today are Dr. Loretta Foley, the deputy minister of the department; Lesley Allen, the assistant deputy minister for advanced education and careers; and Paul Devitt, the director of management services. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. General comments. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in the Minister's opening remarks, I had some interest in his closing comments that referred to the capital program with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. My specific interest was in the area of student residences for the Aurora College campuses in the Northwest Territories.

I have been working with my community, as well as with the Minister, to try and have the residence situation dealt with in Inuvik, because within this budget, it is planned to proceed with the construction of the Aurora Campus facility in Inuvik. That being the main facility, however, not to proceed with the residence. Instead, they are putting some minor capital towards refurbishing what we call in Inuvik the Blueberry Patch, to allow for students to use those facilities.

My concern with that practice, Mr. Chairman, is the fact that we would be putting money into those facilities that would soon not be used by the college anymore because there would have to be a need to address the college situation with an actual residence. I know the community has contacted the department to look at alternative ways of addressing that.

I find it interesting that in here, there are actually dollars identified for the Aurora College residence units at Northern United Place here in Yellowknife. I hope that as we proceed through this fiscal year, the Minister and his department would be working with the groups in Inuvik to try to address the residence situation in Inuvik, hopefully in a timely fashion.

My concern, Mr. Chairman, is the Minister's response to my questions in the House about the situation they are looking at right now, which might be able to do for the next 10 years. I do not think you would find anyone in our community that would agree with that, especially with the older units that we call, again, the Blueberry Patch.

With that, Mr. Chairman, hopefully we can proceed and work cooperatively from the community and the department to address the needs of the students who would be addressing the Aurora College facility in Inuvik. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The process that we used was, when I took over as Minister of the department, there was an effort to look at a P3 process and that was not proceeded with. As a result, the capital planning committee from Inuvik was in agreement that there was a possibility to transfer funding from a project for one of the schools and proceed first with the college building. That was approximately $9 million that was in that particular budget.

I agreed that we would juxtapose the funding for that, which left the whole issue of residences, Mr. Chairman. At the time, the residence issue was certainly not brought to my attention, but we knew that we needed to solve the problems of the residence. As a result, we worked on the row housing to bring that back on stream.

We already had, and have now, 30 units. We are bringing 18 more on stream, of which eight will be provided for the public and 10 will be used for college purposes. We see that as a short-term solution, not necessarily one or two years, but certainly short-term being about eight or 10 years, somewhere in there.

I did make a commitment to the Member that we would discuss possibilities and be open-minded about it when I go to Inuvik to discuss matters with the leaders in the Beaufort-Delta. My officials have been instructed to make contact. As a matter of fact, I have already been contacted by way of letter by two of the Inuvik Beaufort-Delta aboriginal organizations to look at this issue. I am open to it.

However, the challenge for us, Mr. Chairman, and why we wanted to proceed with the row housing, is we do need a bit of time here to analyze, to be able to look at the possibilities. We are talking in terms of $4 million plus here in order to put a residence in place.

However, as I said, I am open to it. If we can look at it in terms of cooperation, looking at possibilities and then if I can get a possible proposal that is acceptable, then we can proceed from there. It has to go through the capital planning process, as we all know.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, this process, and I forwarded summaries of a report done in 1996, I believe, or maybe 1997, by the Department of Public Works for Education, Culture and Employment. It clearly identified that any work in this area would be costing this government between $13 million and $16 million, other than renovations of Grollier Hall, which no longer exists because that building has now been torn down.

In a sense, it has been earmarked. It has gone through a process, but because of the P3 and yes/no sort of thing with that process, we seem to be penalized in the community of Inuvik and the region, because now we are going to work on some older systems to try and deal with the student residence situation.

Initially, the outlay of cash may seem like a small amount, but we are going to pay for it in the end through leases, I believe, because this private company that is going to do the repairs is not just going to give us back units. I think in that end, we are going to have some concerns.

Hopefully, the department, community and aboriginal groups can come together and come up with a satisfactory plan that would see a replacement of the student residence portion in a timely manner.

I want to ensure that the Minister -- short-term to me, I would identify the life of a politician as short-term. Eight to 10 years, we are done here, elections go around and new Members would have to try to pick up the pieces of what was promised or not promised or committed to and not committed to. I am hoping that we can address this in a manner that would be appropriate.

I am sure, as I have shown Members of this Assembly the report, this is something that has been in the works and it is not a brand new capital project. It is a matter of building a residence that would replace the existing one. Right now, we are just building the main facility, we would not be replacing the existing. We are replacing with less than what is there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, we are certainly interested in looking at and discussing possibilities, Mr. Chairman, as I committed before. I will remain open-minded about it. There are some constrictions for me in terms of how do you find $4 million or $5 million. I will certainly accept any ideas and possibilities in this.

I think we got into this on a best-of-intentions process, because the college in a sense was being knocked back about six years in building, but there seemed to be a general interest on everyone's part to proceed. The hamstringing that I ran into after the fact, which I was not even aware of, was the desire to have a residence with the college.

At the time, as I said, we entered into this with the best of intentions. We had $9 million to build the building. We wanted to build the building and we are proceeding with that. After that came the question of the residence. It was there, no question, in the original days but I was not aware of that. We did this with the best of intentions and we will continue to work on that basis to see what can be achieved on this.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to make a couple comments in this area. The first is one I have raised many times to the Minister. It is an issue that affects all areas of the Northwest Territories, especially more so now than ever before because we are starting to see a lot of resource development and activity.

The issue of training has come up many times and I have great concern with this issue, especially in the area of oil and gas training. I had the opportunity to talk to the Minister many times. I realize there are some huge obstacles to overcome. However, I am not totally satisfied that we are taking a comprehensive approach with oil and gas training. There is very little money for oil and gas training. I think there is only $600,000 for the whole of the Northwest Territories.

I know from the lists in my communities, especially in Fort Providence, they are growing. The lists of people wanting to take the training are getting longer and longer and we are not seeing any solutions. In fact, some of the training that took place this year was too late to take advantage of the winter exploration in the oil and gas.

I would like to know if the Minister is looking at putting in some type of structured process that we can look at and present to our communities. Right now, when we have our constituency meetings or when we talk to our constituents, we really cannot present them with any document that addresses how we are going to deal with oil and gas training.

I know the Department of Education, Culture and Employment has put together a booklet or a document that outlines all of the different jobs in the field of oil and gas, but that does not do us any good because we need a process that will spell out how we can go from A to B.

If you ask any region or any community that is being affected by oil and gas right now, they are going to tell you we do not have enough training programs out there. We in fact have no training programs developed here by our own colleges. That is really unfair to our communities. It is resulting in a lot of people having to be flown in from outside of the North.

I do not accept the argument that we cannot put together a long-term plan to deal with oil and gas training because right now, we do not have any money. We have seen it done in every other department.

A good example is the Highway Strategy. When that was developed, when the consultation process took place in the communities, there was no money. When it was tabled in this House, there was no money to complete that plan. Yet in the last while, we are fully aware that we are going to be doing a good portion of that strategy.

I think that is the same thing that has to be done with oil and gas training but I do not see it happening. Can the Minister explain what his plans are for oil and gas training across the North?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Actually, it is a good subject to have an opportunity to discuss. There is a lot of activity out there, a lot of possibilities. Early on in the game, we developed a Human Resource Development Plan, Mr. Chairman, that we used as part of the Non-Renewable Resource Strategy. We attempted to get funding from the federal government. Much of this was related to oil and gas training.

Subsequent to that, we decided we would make our own investments. We invested $500,000 for access training and this year, halfway through the year, we passed a supp and we added $600,000 for advanced training. So that is $1.1 million we are putting in from our particular money, Mr. Chairman, for training itself.

The Member is correct. We need to continue to work on planning and planning for specific areas. What we did do was ask the various players in all of this to come together to form a committee so that we can continue to pursue funding from the federal government. Funding is what is going to drive this whole thing. We have that committee together; HRDC, DIAND, RWED, and ourselves, but it fell apart in September of last year. We are attempting to get it back together again. It fell apart because the federal government decided that it would put its money into the security matters. Industry is together on that as well with us, as are aboriginal groups.

Additionally, on the pipeline side, my ADM was at a meeting in Fort Simpson a while ago. They also are forming a committee for training. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have said it many times before that it is very disappointing that there is really no comprehensive plan for us to deal with training in our communities. This government has known for many years that oil and gas was coming down the tubes.

I guess it is really not fair to this Minister that he has had to scramble in the last couple of years. However, this government, all our bureaucrats were fully aware that oil and gas was at the verge of entering into a lot of oil and gas activity. We are not ready. It is becoming more and more blatantly obvious.

I feel we are really short-changing the people of the North. We are not even able to address a small percentage of the training needs in the North. We are really dependent on the private sector. This government really cannot do a whole lot.

We start spending the $600,000 that we have into the different regions. One hundred thousand dollars in the whole Deh Cho region of 10 communities does not go very far. I do not even know what other programs are really being delivered in my riding. I do not see them. I would like to ask the Minister, how much money from the Northern Employment Support Program was spent in the Deh Cho, in my riding?

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct. I think it requires more work. It requires more investment. There is no question about it. We have been a bit restricted because of our own limited availability of funding. I have just been advised that we are working on regional plans, Mr. Chairman. A meeting was held this week with the ARTA groups on this matter. We are promoting it on a regional basis. We are looking to establish more training committees and subcommittees. It is functioning very well up in the Beaufort-Delta but we have known all along that we have to do that in the other areas.

With regard to the Member's question of investment by region, the South Slave Deh Cho region, we have a number of areas that we are looking at for investment. For example, the Aboriginal Government Private Sector Partnership Fund, which is a MNE program, there is $193,000 for a total of about 58 participants. I do not have the communities together, but that is for the South Slave Deh Cho area, Mr. Chairman. Advanced oil and gas training, there were 31 participants for a total of $198,000. That is in the specific oil and gas area. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to shift gears a little bit and ask a question to the Minister regarding an initiative that he is working on along with another department, and that is the Harmonization Strategy that has yet to be tabled in this House. I want to point out to the Minister and ask him to respond on a couple of questions. I am running out of time so I will ask both of them at this point.

I want to know why there is no consultation process for this strategy. The communities are not even privy to what is in the document. They have not been given formal notice whether their rents are going to go up, whether they are going to go down. Why does this Minister not, along with the Minister of Housing, allow this document to come to the floor of this House for a debate?

This initiative was introduced by the 13th Assembly. It is not an issue that has been rubberstamped, I believe, by the Social Programs Committee. I do not see any opportunity for us to discuss this issue in the public because it has not been formally presented to the House. It has not been tabled in this House. There is no consultation in the communities. It is kind of like "We are going to push it through whether you like it or not, sink or swim."

I would like to ask the Minister to respond on the issue of consultation and also the comment about the debate.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The document that was prepared and the documentation that we had in hand on harmonization, we briefed the Standing Committee on the Social Envelope on this a number of times, Mr. Chairman. So we did go through the process of involving MLAs in the process.

What did happen in the end was that notification was sent out to those individuals who would be affected by this, but there was a shortcoming in the information that was passed on. What has been decided, Mr. Chairman, was to look, because of the concern by Members, at those people out there who will be negatively impacted by this harmonization process.

Members expressed concern about that, so we decided we would delay the implementation to give us time to ensure the people who are negatively impacted on this are properly notified of the amount of change that is going to take place for their particular rents. Additionally, to see if there were mechanisms by which we could deal with the specific issue of how to implement the system for those who are going to be negatively impacted.

We feel there are definite benefits of this to a lot of people, Mr. Chairman, because people who are low-income earners and so forth, many of them will benefit. There are people who will be negatively impacted. Those are people who have the resources to be able to pay. We needed the time and that is why the delay was instituted. We needed the time to be able to deal with that and to give proper notification to individuals, and then to take the time to take this back to Cabinet to redevelop the process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have several areas that I would like to ask the Minister some questions about. The first one is something that I have raised in the House, I think it has been a couple of weeks at least now since I asked the Minister questions about graduation rates. I have yet to date to receive a response. I did go on-line and also called a school the day of asking the question and get the answers for myself some short hours later, but I still have not heard back from the Minister on it.

Really my concern was about the fact that we seem to do a lot of touting of our graduation rates. We talk a lot about the fact that graduation rates have improved since grade extensions, we are going in the right direction, and yes, this is a slow process, making progress, but we are making progress and we are going the right way.

My concern is that graduation rates may be going up, but I ask myself, what does graduation really mean? I think a lot of people these days are concerned about this. We like to compare ourselves to other jurisdictions but I am not certain that we are comparing apples to apples. I found out that our graduation requirements are not quite the same as Alberta's, whom we often compare ourselves to.

I did ask the Minister questions about whether we really did have to pass diploma examinations in order to graduate. From all that I can tell and from all the research I have done, Mr. Chairman, although the Minister has not provided me an answer yet, the answer is no, we do not. It is about blended marks between your term mark and your graduation mark.

It seems to me, theoretically, I could have a term mark from my school of 90 percent. As long as I score 10 percent on the Alberta-based diploma, I am going to get that 50 percent and I am going to move on and we are going to say I graduated and everybody is happy and we can chalk up another graduation stat.

Even further to that, Mr. Chairman, I believe that if you get a 48 percent blended mark, we bump you over the bar. I have concerns about this. I am wondering if the Minister could address them and specifically speak to whether or not we do indeed require our students to actually pass those diploma examinations. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Ootes.