Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General comments. The first thing is with respect to something that this government has promised a lot, which is to guarantee jobs for some of the people who come out of Aurora College. I don't want to mention any other program other than the Nursing Program at this time, Mr. Chairman. This is an issue that came up with Health and Social Services and there have been lots of questions about that. I think there is room for this government to do a better job of working the transition between those grads that are trained in our facilities into their jobs.
Mr. Chairman, I do know that it is now possible for the government to follow up... I think this government has made a promise back in 2000 that under the Maximizing Northern Employment policy that as long as our residents go and get their secondary education at Aurora College, they will be guaranteed a job. I'm not sure if this government promised that, but that is the basic principle we work on. I understand if five, six, seven years down the road that the government... and I do understand that that concept applies to a job in the Territories, not at Stanton Hospital; I understand that. But I'm not sure if we're doing enough planning to make sure that we make as many jobs as possible available. For example, at the Stanton Hospital, the last go-round, there were 14 grads coming out of there and there were not anywhere near enough jobs to offer those new grads. It could have been possible for these nurses to be trained at this facility because even if we wanted to be able to have these nurses be placed elsewhere in the smaller communities, I think all nurses coming out of school could benefit from working in a bigger hospital setting where they work with other doctors and nurses and other health care professionals so that they feel comfortable and feel like they're trained before they could move out to other regional centres.
I just have a note from someone, for example, where they were a slew of new hirings at the hospital just before these new grads were coming out. I have no idea what kind of coordination there is between the Health or whatever department, whatever the receiving department is, of the new grads coming out of the college. I do understand that we have such complex jurisdictions that, you know, the hospital is a separate jurisdiction, we have Department of Health, we have the Department of Education, and then we have the Yellowknife health board and we have Aurora College board. I mean there are lots of players that need to work together. I think when a government makes a promise like that, I think we have to follow up with an implementation plan that looks at the total picture and there's got to be somebody who could foresee the years down the road and do a plan that addresses the promise made. I think, in trying to address and listen to the nurses that come and talk to us, I don't think that's been done.
I do understand that there's been lots of changeover in the management of not only the senior management of the hospital over that five or six years, but there's been lots of players coming and going, and even just at the immediate supervisor level, like nurses in charge or management of nurse...I'm not pointing a finger at any one person, but I really believe that there has been lack of planning, lack of foresight, and lack of comprehensiveness on how we're going to best use the resources that we have coming out of the college. The government as a whole has invested a lot of money to get this Nursing Program done up here and I think that we have fallen short in terms of living up to that promise.
Another one that I just want to mention is, I went to a reception about three weeks ago, it was before session, where Aurora College was celebrating this new program that will be at the college that involves the simulator of underground mining. It's a very expensive program and it came about because there was a huge investment by all three diamond companies in equal amounts, as well as federal funding. It was a very good reception and it was a really good thing. The program is a software program, really neat, but very expensive, and we're going to have that program set up.
At that meeting, somebody mentioned to me that with the limited resources we have for education, and we do spend a lot of money on this department and it's just been pointed out today that the Department of ECE is, for the first time, moving ahead of Health and Social Services in its budget. I guess that's a good thing because we want to spend more money educating than...Anyway, I won't go there, but it's a huge department and yet somebody
mentioned that there is so much educating going on at different parts of government. We have Aurora College; we have education programs in MACA, in community government; we have education happening in human resources; we have...I understand why all this, and I don't know where else they're doing teaching but I think there's quite a few training pockets going on in the department. I think, ideally, what I would like to see, and what a lot of people would like to see, is all or most of post-secondary education being delivered out of Aurora College and allowing Aurora College to grow eventually into a university or university equivalent, or one that would do both. Because institutions like that have to grow and that could only happen...I mean, I think it's a good thing for it to grow. I certainly support that and that could only happen if...(inaudible)...for education and training happens in that institution and not have all the government resources spread out.
I don't know if this just happened by happenstance, different Ministers set up different programs because they got funding from somewhere, or it was a government initiative and these programs are allowed to grow, or it was just never really looked at to be in the same place. I don't know what it is. I agree with the principle of having separate campuses. Obviously we want to have a vibrant and healthy program going on in Inuvik and Yellowknife and Fort Smith, but I see a lot of training dollars going out of the government, as well. For some speciality expert ideas, I think it's a good thing to use private sector and some speciality services, but in the long run, if we look at how we have been spending our training money and education money that government is spending for the last 10 years, I think we've really dispersed it so thin that we have really hurt our chances of Aurora College even being stronger and having a lot more presence than it does now. I don't mean this in any negative way to Aurora College. They do a lot of good delivery of training, but I think there's a lot more that could be done, or would be able to do if the government...For one reason or another, I don't know if it's a result of a master plan or something, but I don't think we are maximizing that intensity that we could get from having most, if not all, training coming out of that college.
Those are my two comments and I would be interested in the Minister's feedback on that. Thank you.