Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, as I said, there's no yes or no answer to that question. It really does depend on what course of study the person wants to take in college whether or not what they're taking in high school will qualify them to get there.

Right now, the curriculum is not out there. So I'm not sure about people being referred into it yet because we only have draft curricula that will be piloted this fall for most of the courses. We're not in a situation where this is out there right now.

There are two streams right now. This will add a third. What's really critical is that the student, the school and the parents all be involved in discussing which of those courses the student should be following because there has to be an understanding of where you want to wind up at the end of Grade 12, where you want to go from there. Because that really does colour the courses you need to take and be successful at in order to move forward. So that's the big thing. It's going to take involvement with kids, families and schools all working together to make sure that people can get into college, if that's where they want to go. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Minister Dent. I've got Mr. Menicoche next. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I've been listening with some interest to the Minister's remarks and I'm looking through his other opening remarks, as well, and I'm pleased to see that he's been quite responsive to a lot of committee work that's happening, as well as concerns from the Members. Once again, Education, Culture and Employment, our department plays a large role in the constituents I represent. I've got six communities and, for the most part, every part of the Minister's ministry kind of impacts how I do business in the Nahendeh riding.

Firstly, with early childhood development, we've got to spend as much resources as we can, and some of that federal money the sooner we get her into the system, the better we can address the needs of our new and young population and their children as they start to begin their journey through our school system.

Part of my job, as a legislator, is to help the ministry identify some problems with the schooling system and help them design systems that will work. In my communities we've got small schools and in 2002 there was a small schools report issued. As I read through it, there are lots of considerations that our department should be leaning towards when addressing our schooling system. In larger centres, you've got many, many teachers that are teaching different courses, but in the smaller schools you basically have a man and wife team running all ages in the schooling system. In fact, the funding for the small schools is quite unique, too. Like, you offer somebody like a .25 janitor, what does that mean? So just to bear in mind those difficulties. I'm not quite sure how much work the ministry has done with the small schools report in order to address some of its recommendations and improving the system with that respect.

Early in my term, too, I approached the Minister in the House and lobbied him, as well, to encourage and to allow our teachers to learn an aboriginal second language; in fact, to be skilled enough to learn and to teach it in the schools. We use lots of local people in our school system and the Minister told me that when the teachers go for secondary training or else for upgrading their skills, that it was based on 80 percent of their pay. I also indicated to the Minister that when there's a lack or when there's a gap, in order to fulfill that gap we offer more of an incentive and, in fact, I think just about at that time we wanted more lawyers in the north and I think anybody that wanted to do that, we offered, like, 100 percent of their pay to attend school to become lawyers. Yet when we're asking for aboriginal second language teachers, we only offered them 80 percent of pay when they went to school. So I was saying, well, it's a huge gap. I see there are some new initiatives now in the newspapers to have teachers of Dene as a second language, and I'd like to say that's a good thing and that's the kind of thing that we need in our education system, as well. We have to bend over backwards for aboriginal teachers, fund them and allow them to learn and become teachers of Dene as a second language. That's an identified gap in the schools. So that's something that I really am supportive of and I still want to press that, because, recently, I was back home and talking about this very subject, and again, it was pointed out that the gaps there. I said, well, I've done some work on it, but I forgot one of the tenants or one of the rules, as an MLA, is that I have to keep talking about it. Just because I stopped talking about it doesn't mean that the problem went away. So I just thought I would revive that with the Minister and say, look, it's still a priority for my teachers in my region to have one of our official languages endorsed in our union system, or whatever it is, to allow training in our official languages.

Another thing that's going to have a big impact is a reduction of the students' age for funding when they're attending our school system. It doesn't really affect the student, but it affects the programming that our schools are able to, and the resources that they give towards teaching older students, I guess, adult learners as it were, Mr. Chair. So I'm not quite sure of the impact, but I know that anyone over the age of, I think, 21 years old, our schools aren't going to be funded for them. I'm just not quite sure if the Minister found another way in order to fill that gap, as well, to provide the resources to our teachers and to our schools to allow more adult learners in our schools, because it's a good thing that they're doing to allow that to happen and I'd like to see it encouraged, but I'm just not quite sure in what direction our ECE is spending in order to allow this to continue.

One other great area of concern for me is I know the Minister and the government has moved the Public Housing Subsidy Program over to ECE starting April 1st, but I still have grave concerns about that. I know that they've been actively advertising and trying to get public discussion on it in getting the rental clients open to meetings to explain the new program for them, but I think my fear is that a lot of them, for whatever reason right now, are eligible for the subsidies from the LHOs, but I'm not entirely convinced, Mr. Chair, that moving it over to ECE...I don't know what kind of guidelines they have for providing rent scale subsidies, if they're going to use the current system, which for other income support programs, I'm not quite sure. Perhaps if the Minister can respond to me exactly how the application process is going to be. Let's say client A who makes $1,200 a month, exactly how that person would fit or benefit from moving the public housing subsidy over to ECE. I'm thinking that somebody in the $1,200 to $1,800 range will not benefit from this, because given the old income support guidelines, they're making, I think, the poverty level. They're making enough that they don't need assistance from the corporation or from ECE, but I know for sure that they're out there, they're single parents, they have one or two children and they're just struggling as it is. So I don't want to further burden them. I'm not quite sure what kind of phone calls I'll be getting after April 1st when they start filling out their applications and getting it into a system for public housing subsidy.

So those are my initial concerns, Mr. Chair, and I'll be pleased if the Minister can comment on some of the important areas that I covered. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The department is very much aware of the importance of aboriginal language and culture in seeing success in school. So that is something that is very much encouraged. In fact, it would be marvellous if we could see immersion in the language of the community, particularly the first few grades of school. So it is an area that the department is very supportive of. We have, as the Member has noticed or mentioned in his comments, there's been some advertising from the college seeking people who would like to improve their ability by taking courses that the college is offering for the Aboriginal Language and Cultural Instructor Program. We're hoping to see that program beefed up. I am hoping that, in the next year or so, we'll be able to fund the college to offer that as a base program so that we can offer it more often in more locations throughout the Northwest Territories.

We are also working with stakeholders to develop an aboriginal language curriculum to help teachers who are fluent in the language have a curriculum to work with in the classroom so that they can teach the aboriginal language. That process has been underway for a while, but most recently the group met in January of this year to review where they were. They've agreed to hire an independent reviewer to take a look at the process to date to make some comments, and then they're going to come back together in April to review that again, expand the group even further and see if they can't move towards finalizing this curriculum, which should be an important step. The first thing is we have to find people who are fluent in the language in order to be able to teach it, but this will be a tool, then, that those people who are fluent will be able to use in the classroom so that they know how to deliver that course subject. So we're trying to make sure that we can provide the assistance that's needed to make sure that we can improve aboriginal languages in our schools.

In terms of the funding for students who are over 22, as I indicated to the Member for Monfwi, I am planning to seek approval to offer divisional educational councils the option of either taking the funding for full-day kindergarten or for those students who are over 22. I think it's important to understand that we're not proposing to completely stop the funding for 22-year-olds plus. What we're proposing is that we reduce that funding to 50 percent. So it would be kind of like phasing out of funding. We'll fully fund students through the age of 21, but once they hit 22, we think the DECs can take a reduced level of funding because, in part, throughout the North, we're funding education for people in that age group through the college. So it's like a duplication, in effect. Now we've heard that in some regions the delivery system, the college isn't as well represented and, therefore, the schools want to keep on doing it and we think we can accommodate that. So we're going to take a look at how we can do that.

In terms of public housing, it's our goal to make sure that the Member doesn't receive any extra phone calls after April 1st.

I know that the Member gets phone calls now and he will continue to get phone calls on the issue, but we want to try and make sure that you're not getting any extra phone calls as a result of the transfer. On April 1st there will be no change in the assessment for the delivery of the subsidy. There may be a change in the place for the application, but there won't be a change in the assessments. At some future time it may be the will of this Legislature that there is some change, but then that's something we'll have to discuss at a future date. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. I've got Ms. Lee next. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is my third time going around on special needs and I'm not sure if I'm getting much further ahead. There's a nine-page opening statement by the Minister. There's a lot of items that I need to cover, and I don't know if I'm just not asking the right questions or what, but I'm going to try one more time. The last go around the Minister suggested that to say that to be able to assess and diagnose, or labelling it as sometimes it's put, the Minister indicated that we couldn't wait for that long and that would somehow preclude providing special needs services to the children who need them. I don't think that that was in any way what I was trying to get at. I know that there's going to be a number of briefings booked by not only this department, but other departments for Social Programs at the end of March. I'm interested in making sure that the Minister does the kind of legwork beforehand so that we could have, you know, a substantively meaningful discussion about how to improve this special needs funding and special needs programming.

So I wasn't looking for, I guess, some of the diagnosis or assessments for the children of special needs have to be medical or whatever, but I just want to be able to know that we are hitting the mark with the money we are giving. The Minister indicates in the information we have here is the needs assessment of our children show that almost six out of 10 needed some kind of special needs assistance. We are funding at 15 percent now and we're trying to increase it to 17 with the hope of making it to 20. That is still a lot less than 40 percent, granted that not every one of those 40 percent need full-time funding or full-time aid, but it's entirely possible that we fund special needs at 20 percent, we just top it at 20 percent to whatever we're funding to schools. It could be that one person or the top five percent of needed students who could take up the entire 20 percent, and then what do we do with the 90 percent of kids? I just need to be able to get from the Minister that there's some kind of system in place that tells him, or tells us, how far we are meeting the mark. Is there any kind of system there? Is there any kind of a consistent policy you're applying to all the districts? I understand he talks to the district heads and blah, blah, blah and he must be getting some kind of information, but he used to sit as a Regular Member on this side of the floor and we used to talk about the need for special needs funding and I cannot believe he didn't discover until last year, after two years of being a Minister,

that actually the money was not being spent on special needs like he thought it was.

So you've got to sit here and wonder, like, what do we have to do to make sure that money we're spending on special needs are going to the kids who need special needs, and that we have some kind of idea about what the needs are out there without all that distraction about labelling or whatever. I mean how do we do that? Like, I need better information from the Minister as to how we are meeting the mark and how we are improving this situation. So I want the Minister to give me another round on what his plan is. Hopefully I'll get ahead there.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I said, and I'll commit again, when we meet with the committee, we'll be happy to share with the committee what other jurisdictions are doing and how they meet the requirements for providing people or for providing for an education program for people with special needs. We set out in the act that every child deserves an opportunity to have their educational needs met in the classroom. That's the way our system is based. The expectation is that if a child needs support it will be given. It is up to each individual divisional education council to make sure that that's being delivered. Because we don't have in existence an assessment of what the needs are across the Northwest Territories. There's nobody in the Territories who can tell me how many kids we have that have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder or who may have other challenges, whether its autism or audio processing problems. There are a whole range of needs and most kids don't fit neatly into a little square over here that says they just need special needs all the time.

Most kids range on a continuum so that they may need some assistance at some times for literacy. They may need some assistance at some times for numeracy, or they may need some other special assistance at some times. It is up to the classroom teacher, the administration in the school and school boards to take the funding that we deliver and put it into appropriate programming for all of those kids.

Most kids don't need a full-time aid. We have a number of kids that do. I think it is also important to remember that this funding is supposed to address those kids who need challenge education, as well. This isn't just for kids with problems of getting through school or problems meeting the regular academic program. This is also intended to assist schools to provide funding for those kids who may need a challenge.

In terms of why I didn't know that it wasn't all being spent, I don't know how anybody outside of the ministry could have known this sort of information beforehand. It wasn't made available to us when I was a Regular Member, but I am quite happy to make it available to the Regular Members now what happened in the past. When I became aware of the issue, Madam Chair, I very quickly issued a directive that said this shall change. I insisted that the school boards report on how they are spending their money so that I am now comfortable in saying that we aren't putting out $3 million more for special needs than what is being spent. I am comfortable with our current directive and the requirement that I have made for reporting that the money is being spent appropriately. I have no doubt that we will be able to demonstrate that we need to spend more.

The Member is quite right; 20 percent may not do it. I have never made any claim that that is going to be the magic number. What I have said is that we are clearly not where we need to be. We need to spend more, so we have embarked on a three-year program to increase the amount of spending that we are going to put into the system to try and achieve the improved outcomes for kids who need to see that. If it takes more funding than that, Madam Chair, then I would hope that the Legislative Assembly will agree that we need to put more money in. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Ms. Lee.

Well, Madam Chair, I have to tell you that I have listened to every word the Minister said. I don't think this round was really any clearer, or more enlightening, than the last three rounds. I have to tell you that this is just not good enough. Madam Chair, he used to ask questions in this House about the need to spend inclusive money. Even in the first two years of him being a Minister, every time we asked questions about is the money for special needs spent the way they are supposed to be, every time we mentioned it, he'd flaunt this long piece of document that says accountability framework or something. I'm sure I'm going to have to get research to go back and do research on how many promises made about how every dollar we are approving is going to special needs funding. Now he is telling me that there are people in schools who are supposed to know what the needs are. We are going to do it the way we are. We don't know what the needs are. We don't know if the 20 percent is going to meet it. We don't know if the 20 percent is meeting 100 percent or 40 percent who need this help. Are we meeting 90 percent of it? Are we meeting 10 percent of it? Do we know who needs full-time aid? If we don't know, what kind of tests should we do to figure out who needs a full-time aid? Why is it that when a child needs a full-time aid one year with the same condition next year, that child doesn't need a full-time aid but nobody there it's their objective qualified to tell me why that changed? If you listen to him, he makes it sound like it's not my fault that I didn't know a school board was spending special needs money on kindergarten. Holy cow! Where is the accountability here, Madam Chair?

We know that school boards are elected, as well. I know that we are dealing with teachers. Teachers have a say on how these programs should be managed. In the interest of getting something done on this very important area that I am determined to clarify, I would like to know if he would engage with the district and come up with the best ideas about how to figure out what the needs are, and how do we know that every penny we are spending and the amount of money that we are spending is making a difference. If it is not, why not? What are the possible options we could look at, as legislators, to make sure that we are making some difference with the extra money that we are adding? The Minister cannot just come back and say more money will do it if he has no idea what difference it is making. I would like to know what the possibility is of some kind of system policy that we could think of with the help of heads of DEAs, education boards and whatever professionals he wants to refer to. We need to have a package that really addresses how we are going

to do this better. Could I ask the Minister to bring that to us in the next Social Programs committee? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have said this already today; what Ms. Lee is asking is exactly what we have done. It is done. This is the process that was undertaken to develop the accountability or the directive that is going out in April. Every single DEA has been involved in it. The NWTTA has been involved in the development of it. We have involved stakeholders throughout to make sure that we are moving the yardsticks. I have also said that we are going to be undertaking a survey this year to find out just how closely we are coming now to meet the requirements that we find in the classroom.

I am not sure, Madam Chair, if Ms. Lee is recommending that we take some money to do medical assessments in the classroom. I guess that is the only thing that I can assume that she is asking, because we have said that, absent that, all we have to work with, not all we have to work with, but we think is good to work with, is the educators, the administrators, the school systems and the parents. That is what we think right now is telling us whether or not we are meeting the needs in the classroom. We don't have an assessment of what we have across the North right now in terms of needs that may be medically related. That is one of the reasons we have worked with Health and Social Services to make sure that we have the teams going into the schools so that we can improve on that. So we are going to do what we can to improve on our assessments, but, right now, we have worked with stakeholders and everybody to try and improve the accountability system. Each of the boards has to report to us specifically in this area how they are spending their money, so we know exactly what they are spending their money on. We know that, under the directive, what is considered an acceptable expenditure. We know what is being done in that way. I don't know what more accountability is going to satisfy. I look forward to the opportunity to meet with the standing committee and we will see if we can move the yardsticks even further.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. General comments. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Minister is right. I would like to know the detail on this question. On page 4 of the Minister's opening comments, the government is committed to culture-based education. Could the Minister point to where in our policy and programming we meet this commitment? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. If you refer to our strategic plan, you will find that aboriginal language and culture is shown as one of the key parts of our departmental operation. In this budget, just in schools alone, we have over $7 million, the same that aboriginal language and culture. Again, this is an area that we have insisted that the funding must be spent in this area exclusively. A directive has been issued to ensure that the funding is spent only for aboriginal language and culture or else the funding isn't provided to the DECs. We have developed Dene Kede and Inuuqgatigiit which are aboriginal language curricula that are available for use in the schools. We are supporting the college to provide Aboriginal Language and Cultural Instructor Program training across the Northwest Territories. There has been a significant increase in uptake in the last year. I know that, for instance, here in Yellowknife, the DEC or the Yellowknife 1 sponsored an Aboriginal Language and Cultural Instructor Program in part, because they were anxious to make sure that they could access the money that we make available for aboriginal language and culture here in the schools.

I think there are a number of various other things that are undertaken, Madam Chair, but I think that highlights the biggest categories.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. How is this being filtered down to the education board level? Are we building a culture-based education to the components of the Education Act where it is being delivered in each classroom under a context not unlike Canadian history would be a critical element in one of the east coast provinces for their history and education programs? Do we have culture-based education that is delivered to every classroom that is delivered as a component of the history class in every grade throughout the NWT? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It probably isn't delivered in every single grade, but grades 4 through 9 and then in high school, I know that there are components of social studies that relate to the aboriginal cultures of the Northwest Territories, yes.