Thank you, Minister Dent. Welcome, Mr. Devitt and Mr. Cleveland, to the proceedings this afternoon. I will now open the floor for general comments from committee on Education, Culture and Employment. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are a lot of important topics under this department, and we are approving quite a large sum of money for $259 million, so I think there will be lots of things to talk about. I am going to start with the first one coming out of the Minister's opening statement. It is in regards to special needs funding, Mr. Chair.

I am happy to see that we are, once again, going to be increasing the funding for special needs. I think it might have been as low as about seven percent when I came into this House six years ago. I think we are looking at increasing it to about 15 percent here. There is no question that the amount of dollars will go a long way, but now I am thinking that we need to do a better job. The Minister and the department will have to do a better job of tightening this program to see that we are dealing with what it is that we are trying to deal with, which is, that I think, we have undefined and an almost overwhelming need of special needs issues in our Territories. I think we all have an instinctive feeling that we are probably not addressing as much of that as we would like. We are increasing dollars on that, but I am not sure if we have a clear picture about what the scope is of the challenge that we are dealing with. I have to tell you that I was quite surprised to hear from someone speaking in local media from one of the school boards saying now that we have more money for kindergarten funding, which is a good thing, we are finally funding kindergarten. We have made it legal with the passage of the legislation a couple of months ago. Now that we are going to be putting money in there for full time kindergarten. I guess we have always suspected that school systems were finding money from within to pay for the kindergarten that the school boards were...school boards made the decision to provide for, but were not being funded for. I had no idea that some of the special needs money might have been spent to fund kindergarten. I have no idea of knowing if that is true or not. I want to give the Minister a chance to explain that. What is it that he is doing now to make sure that, in fact, the money that we are allocating for special needs are going to special needs? What sort of picture does he have as to the needs for special needs in school?

I know that the NWT Teachers' Association, when they came and spoke before the committee, they spoke about the need for additional resources for special needs, but especially for those who need one-on-one care. In listening to the Minister's statement, there is a vast spectrum of special needs that we need to deal with. It could be from someone whose English is not the first language or someone who just has learning difficulties, right up to those who need one-on-one care. I think there is also a question about where do the special needs, from an educational perspective, start and end, and when do the medical special needs for any child start and end. I think there is so much there.

It is surprising to learn that the last directive on inclusive schooling from the Minister was back in 1996. It is almost 10 years old, especially in light of the fact that, for every year for the last six years, we have been increasing funding on special needs and to know that that was actually done in sort of a vacuum, that is a surprise, too. There are lots of things on the workload there on the special needs file. This is something that I am very interested in. I would like to see this really tightened up in the not-too-distant future, hopefully by this summer. I will

just ask the Minister to respond to that and then move on from there. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In terms of the special needs, I would agree with the Member that this is an area that is critically important to ensuring the success of as many of our children as possible in the North. It is an area that I have long wanted to see some increase in funding. I think the last government did a pretty good job of getting the funding increased from where it was to get it up to a level that we have it at today, but that is only part way.

We note from studies that have been done in the past, the student survey that was done several years ago told us what was needed in the classroom. It told us that most teachers saw students who needed more support than what they could get in the classroom, so we knew that we had a ways to go. We are ready to undertake a second study in the course of this year to ensure that we are up to date on what the needs are in the classroom, that we can follow through on them. We are going to also be completing the new directive on inclusive schooling. That has involved all of the divisional educational councils as well as the NWTTA and other stakeholders as we have gone through it. It has gone through a number of drafts. We are in the final draft right now. We expect to have the final version of it out by April so that it can be brought into the course this year.

The Member also raised an interesting situation where we know that there are some people who are going to need assistance through Health and Social Services. We don't necessarily have in our schools the people who are trained to deal with some of the situations that present. Health and Social Services and Education, Culture and Employment are working together to see some teams implemented. These are being funded through Health. I think that there has been some discussion about those when Minister Miltenberger was here as a witness. There will be some collaboration between those teams and the schools to make sure that the services are better delivered within our schools for those students who need services like audiology and some of the more medically oriented assessments. We are hoping that, by bringing some more of that work into the schools, we will also be able to provide some assistance in coaching and training to our special needs assistants so that they can deal with individuals better who present with some of the issues that Health and Social Services will be addressing. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister Dent. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If I could just zero in on the inclusive schooling funding, Mr. Chair. In the answers that the Minister gave to my questions about access to special needs support, Written Question 8-15, I learned that we approved $9 million in 2001-02 and $11.3 million in 2001-02, $15, $266,000 in 2002-03. We approved $15.9 million in 2003-04 and then we approved $16.8 million in 2004-05. That is an increase of over $7.8 million within a span of five years. When you are starting from $9 million, that is almost an 80 percent increase in five years. I would like to think that, when I'm sitting in this House and approving that much additional money, I would really like to see some difference on the ground. In the exact same period that I have attended the Range Lake North School PAG, just because it happens to be the only school in my riding and it is a way for me to get to know what is happening on the ground. I cannot tell you. I don't want to identify one school board or one school. I am just saying that as an example, and I am assuming that is happening everywhere. In those five years, when we keep increasing the money here in this House, I cannot say that I have had too many parents and teachers coming up to me and saying the needs are a lot less, or the kids who need special needs assistance or full-time assistance are getting those special needs help, or that there has been any more rational process through which parents with special needs would be required to go through. It could be that I am not just seeing that. I would like to know if the Minister could give us the information as to do they have any objective analysis and data as to how much they have been able to go in terms of improving and serving the needs of children with special needs with this extra money. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Minister Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The amount of money that we have increased in the system over the years has certainly gone up. It is true. In terms of from 2001-02 to what is funded in 2005-06 for Yellowknife 1, which is the board that has the school the Member is talking about, the increase has been about $1 million for their system in funding. But most of that increase has happened in the very recent past. It is a situation where, with the spreading out of the money through all the boards, not one board has seen a dramatic increase in any one year. One of the things we have done, too, is tighten up on the amount of money that...or the way the money is reported back to us, how it is being spent. We did find, when I became Minister and started looking into what was happening to the money, that there were some school boards that were using special needs funding for things like funding whole-day kindergarten. I directed with the directive that I sent out that that not happen any further and that we really tightened up on the accountability.

The new directive that we are proposing that will be out within the next two months will tighten up on that even more by ensuring that everybody uses a common code of accounts and that the activities are better reported to us so that we can confirm that the money that was being voted by this Assembly now is actually for special needs, is actually going into special needs. It appears that that wasn't always the case in the past, but I am quite comfortable that, in the last couple of years, that has been the case. We also know that we are nowhere near dealing with the problems that we are faced with in the classroom. There are a tremendous number of youngsters who are coming into the system with a lot of needs. There are problems that we are aware of now that, 10 years ago, we weren't even aware of as issues. For instance, I don't think 10 years ago that an auditory processing disorder was ever caught, where that is now becoming something that is much more commonly found in our system and in our schools. The schools have to deal with those issues. While it may not seem, when you look at one school, that you are seeing a big difference. I think that the amount of money that has gone in has been important in letting schools deal with issues. What we are

talking about over the next three years will help schools deal even better with some of the issues that they are faced. One of the key things is going to be the coordination between Health and Social Services and Education that we are trying to get with these teams that will visit schools so that we can, we hope, dramatically improve the services to kids who present with really serious problems.

Thank you, Minister Dent. General comments, committee? Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To help set a little bit of context, I would like to open up with a couple of questions, statistical kind of questions that would give us a bit of a basis here on some of the really broad indicators, Mr. Chair, how our success, progress or more of a status in areas such as literacy, graduation levels, or post-secondary enrolments. If we take a look at how we are doing today compared to five or 10 years ago. I am not looking for great levels of detail, but on some of these principal indicators, and I would offer that literacy, levels of literacy ability, graduation rates for Grade 12 and post-secondary enrolment would be three indicators of just our level of success or progress in education. What could the Minister tell us there, Mr. Chair?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Minister Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Last year, we achieved about a 50 percent graduation rate for the first time ever in the Northwest Territories. In 2001-02, the graduation rate was 36 percent, just for comparison sake. The other interesting note with our graduation rate was that it was almost evenly split 50 percent aboriginal and 50 percent non-aboriginal. It was a 49/51 split, but it was very close to being evenly split. Our participation rates are very close to those that are found across Canada. The participation rate means the number of students participating in high school in that age group that should be in high school. Our participation rates in the Northwest Territories now are very close to the Canadian average. Ten years ago, we were only about 40 percent participation rate. So we have seen a fairly dramatic growth there.

In terms of literacy, there was an international assessment of literacy that was recently released just a couple of weeks ago. That was the first time that the Northwest Territories has participated in that survey. What it found was that the Northwest Territories compared on par with Canada for literacy rates, but it found a significant difference between the aboriginal and non-aboriginal performance. So we clearly have challenges still. In terms of the population, we know that those who are older now tend to have lower rates of literacy because they didn't have access to programs years ago. The years of schooling have gone up very significantly since 1990. A lot of what we are seeing is age related. People who are younger are tending to perform more like their peers across Canada, but we have a large segment of our population that didn't have that opportunity, for one reason or other, to access literacy training or education. So we have a lot of work still to do in adult literacy.

Thank you, Minister Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to see if the Minister could offer some similar information. Some of the principal indicators on the social services side of the mandate have to do with income support. Perhaps it is too early to ask about housing. Again, in terms of where the income support service is vested or mandated in the department, it has a frontline responsibility. Are there some indicators, for instance, like the number of families or individuals in crisis that are core housing need? The levels of demand, Mr. Chair, say in emergency shelters, this kind of thing. I guess I'm looking for things that would indicate, if you will, the social health of our society, or at least to the areas where this department is involved in a level of social caregiving. Can the Minister give us some broad indicators there? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Since 2001-02 through to this year, the unique cases on income assistance annually has dropped by 300. Individual cases could mean an individual; it could mean a family. That is an individual case. I don't have it divided out by that proportion here easily although I think I can calculate it from what I have. The caseload has stayed almost exactly the same on a monthly basis for workers. The number of residents who are between the ages of 19 to 29 who are on income support each year has dropped quite substantially from 700 to 600. The number of senior citizens receiving the supplementary benefit has stayed almost exactly the same. The numbers of students who are accessing student financial assistance has increased only slightly from just over 1,400 to 1,500 a year now over that same period of time, so that is a five-year stand.

In terms of the shelters that ECE funds for emergency housing, there has been some small increase in demand, but it hasn't been significant. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Dent. Mr. Braden.

Okay. Looking for any correlation here, Mr. Chair, between the relative strength is a mild word for our economy. We are in a boom economy here and trying to relate that to some of these indicators. If graduation rates are up 50 percent, is it fair to suggest that maybe more people see more opportunity or more chances of actually getting a job here in the North, so they are working harder in attaining some graduation? If the number of income support files is down by what percentage, Mr. Chair?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is down about 10 percent over that five-year period. I should point out that there was, before the 2001 period, I believe, an even bigger drop, because that was the time when the economy really started to take off. So the biggest drop took place in the late 1990s and going into 2001. We have, since that time, seen a continued decrease, down about 10 percent in that same period of time. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Dent. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Among some of these very broad general indicators, are there any trends that stand out for the Minister or the department in terms of things getting better, or maybe getting worse, on any particular area in his mandate, Mr. Chair?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the good news is that the economy continues to be strong. The graduation rate is improving and we have an awful lot of opportunities for young people. I think young people are hearing that. That is helping us to ensure that young people stay in school, make sure that they are ready to get into a trade, ready to move into a college education or go to university. I think, for us, the news is good. The uptake on SFA has gone up by 10 percent over that same period of time. We know that that sort of growth is good. We know that there has been a big growth in the numbers of apprentices over that period of time, as well. Those are good news issues. It puts more strain on the department in a way that we are expected to find more money for student financial assistance, or we need to find more money to subsidize apprenticeship, but that is really good news. That is not something that I am going to whine about having to find more money for.