Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I said, I am not sure what's available through Health and Social Services. In Education, at this point, we don't have a mandate to develop centres that would deal with children who have severe challenges. I would be happy to discuss with my colleague, the Minister of Health and Social Services, whether or not there was a role for ECE to play in that, but right now it's outside our mandate. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Next on the list is Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Madam Chair...(English not provided)

Madam Chair, I have specifically three areas I want to focus on: grants and contributions, fees and payments. First I'd like to highlight the school fees charged to aboriginal students. Those fees are for after school curricular programs or during the school sports program. Some aboriginal students' parents are not working, as we all know. Most of them are really struggling to keep their kids in school and keep them out of trouble. In order to do that, they need to have them in sports, but they cannot have them in sports due to all these fees that are attached to extra-curricular activities. As you know, some of them are options for students to pursue, whether it be weight lifting, whether it be extra-curricular activities in schools. There are all kinds of sports happening, and there's clothing attached to it, too. But at the same time, we encourage our students to stay out of trouble, to stay in school, to get involved. As the Minister indicated earlier, students need to be active in schools, and we must follow through with that. I'd like to find out why this is continuing in our schools, where our aboriginal students are paying for extra-curricular activities. That's part of the school program. School sports are part of the school program. Sure, they are taught all day and at the same time they are being active in school, as well. They are representing the school when they travel as well. But we are also leaving out the poor students whose parents are not working. They're not treated the same. For individuals that may be wealthy, they're travelling, their kids are in sports, they wear top notch clothing. But at the same time, we're leaving out the lower-classed ones. Sure, they're at the same level, they're taught the same, but at the same time they cannot afford to get into a program.

I, myself, disagree with that process. I've witnessed it. My kids are Tlicho members, as well, and I had to pay the fees. I'm not talking about me, but I'm talking about future kids of those people that are living in Yellowknife or surrounding areas that are required to pay these additional fees. I certainly hope the Minister will take that into consideration and waive that fee for the goodness of all the students that are growing up.

Madam Chair, if I can continue, just wrapping up with my next item: the cultural perspective. Here in the North we're unique, quite unique compared to other provinces, other jurisdictions. The TCSA culture program, the budget is adequate in order to fund culture programming. There are subsidizations from local community governments, and all sorts of other fundings that are applied for. Many, many proposals have been submitted and drafted up. It's very time consuming and teachers certainly don't have time to write those proposals, or administrators, let alone the principals. ECE funds some of these cultural programs in school, but it's certainly not enough. We talk about education program at the community where there's a general pot for culture program, where they always tell us, well, you can take it out of your pot to hire a traditional elder, or on-the-land program.

Skidoos; without skidoos, without traps, without tents, you cannot survive on the land nowadays, and those are key to promoting on-the-land culture programs in schools. If I understand it correctly, the Department of ECE does not fund schools to purchase school equipment and supplies such as snowmobiles, four-wheelers, traps, tents, as I indicated earlier. But without this equipment, one cannot go out on the land and survive.

Most importantly, Madam Chair, the wages of the elders, they must be comparable to the teachers. They are the traditional teachers in our small, remote communities and we must recognize them as teachers as well. Sure, we can say, well, degrees. They do have degrees in the bush. But when we say we need more money, the department will come back and say, well, you've got a general pot, $137,000, take it out of there. You know, we can't even buy 15 snow machines or equipment to cover that. So there are a lot of issues around that area. We, as GNWT, have always stressed that we support on-the-land culture programs, and we certainly do, but we must put more money, we must invest in a culture program; vis-...-vis that we, as a Tlicho Nation, send our delegation of new staff and students out on bear land. That cost alone is well beyond the $137,000 we get a year. That should clearly show that we are a model for the North, as well, and we will continue to do that with or without ECE's assistance, because we are the new government now. But we must work with the GNWT to promote even more of that.

In our nations, we are losing our languages and we must promote our language, too. The department must realize that.

I would just like to highlight, Madam Chair, that the culture program, especially with the teachers, has been very successful with our Chief Jimmy Bruneau School back in the '70s and '80s where we hired an elderly lady and a well-respected man that taught and made snowshoes and so forth; you know, traditional garments. But that's gone because we have to take it out of the general pot.

My time is up, Mr. Chair. If I can allow the Minister to follow through with that. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Around the issue of school fees, we issued a directive to all the schools in the Northwest Territories to ensure that they are not charging fees for aboriginal students for the required school programs. So I'm fairly certain that none of the schools in the Northwest Territories are any longer charging fees for required programs.

In terms of things that are not covered in the education, we're not giving the school any money to run the programs that they're running if they're extra-curricular, if they're outside of that. So there has to be some way of paying for it, and the way they've paid for it, I guess, have been they've looked to fees to do it. So if those programs are going to be offered, the money isn't coming from ECE so somebody is going to have to pay for it along the way. But clearly, those programs are not part of the educational process and are not included in what we say that schools have to deliver as part of the education program.

In terms of culture programs and funding not being adequate, I'm quite certain that we could use double the budget we have for schools and put it to good use to educate northerners, but we don't have double that budget available. We have the money we have before us, $170 million, and there's been a substantial growth in that amount of money for what we're providing to schools over the years. So I think this Legislature has demonstrated that it does put considerable importance on the investment around education and is putting its money in.

In terms of cultural programs, schools are not limited to the money that we provide. If they can find ways to offer other programs, perhaps they offer Experiential Science 20 out on the land for part of the year. You don't have to use just one part of the curriculum to ensure that you're involving aboriginal language and culture.

I agree with the Member that it would be nice to have more money in the program, and if we had that flexibility, it would certainly be something I'd like to see. But I don't expect we're going to see enough money in our budget, or enough of an increase in our budget, that we're going to be able to fund snowmobiles and four-wheelers for schools in the near future. It would be nice to be able to do that, but I don't see that coming.

I would congratulate the Member for the foresight that the Tlicho Government has shown in ensuring that they have contributed to language and culture programs. The government has long been involved in programs like the canoe trip every year that involves a lot of elders. The process of building canoes is something that elders work with young people from the high school and demonstrated that skill. As the Member talked about, taking teachers out on the land at the beginning of the season helps particularly the new ones get a better understanding of the culture, and I am certain that if you look at the numbers over the years, has helped ensure more continuity and kept more teachers in that region. It's one of the programs that I point to when I get together with other board chairs as an example that I would hope that other boards could follow for ensuring that new people who come into the region are exposed to the culture and have a chance to understand the importance of the land to the people that they are going to be working with.

But there's a payback here, too. If you take a look at the numbers of people who are involved in post-secondary study in the Northwest Territories, fully 50 percent of the aboriginal students in post-secondary studies now are Tlicho citizens. That means that these investments that the Tlicho Government has made and others have made in the region are really paying off. Education is more than just an ECE responsibility. It is one that is rightfully all of the community's. So the Tlicho have stepped up to the plate and have helped to make sure that more students are going to be successful. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Next I have Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Minister made some comments in terms of the program delivery services. I've been listening to some of the Members and there's two points I want to make to the Minister, and one was raised by my colleague here, Mr. Chair, in terms of a new way of thinking on some of the unique situations we have to deal with in our small communities, even in Yellowknife here, in terms of the

schooling we are presenting with our children and there are some unique, special needs that our children need in terms of educating them and sometimes it's difficult for some of these teachers. They work hard in our communities and they are very dedicated to their profession. Sometimes I'm not too sure if the teachers sometimes get the amount of quality training when they are prepared to come to our smaller communities, on such issues as FAS or autism or even just family violence. It's no fault of theirs. They have a job to do and they do it well and they work hard at it. Sometimes it's very difficult for them to know that, for example, there was a loss of a family member to this young child, and how to deal with the grief issues and that. Just special things that I know they have support from counselling services and that's available. Sometimes it's very difficult with some of these issues. I think that's one, Mr. Chairman, that the department in long-term planning, looking at new ways to deal with the issues, especially the teachers now that come into our communities have to deal with cross-cultural issues. There are some good examples, Mr. Chair, that one of my colleagues talked about, the on-the-land program. The Minister responded by making a specific point to one of my colleagues in terms of that type of program. So we have some real unique needs in our communities.

I guess one thing I'm looking forward to is, is there any chance that the people in the Northwest Territories, the MLAs, professionals, people in the communities, will look at a large territorial meeting on education just in our region? Maybe it has already happened, that there's a special meeting just for careers and education and the unique challenges we have in our communities.

We also look at some of the good things we've done in the North to commend the Minister on bringing the residential school issue into our communities. That's an important part of our history that's long overdue, Mr. Chair, in these type of program deliveries in our communities that we are faced with. So that's one point I want to make. I want to ask the Minister for his comments to that, and I have one more after that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We haven't looked at holding a big public conference to talk about education in the Northwest Territories, because we think it's been more important to get the money into the classroom. What I do, though, is I meet twice a year with all of the chairs from all the boards, and what my expectation is for meetings is in their meetings they will be talking to -- remember the DECs have somebody from the community on them -- they'll be talking to the representatives from the communities, and if there are issues, that they can bring those forward and we can talk about them around the table at those meetings, and then discuss how we might resolve issues or how we might move forward with issues.

Things like what the Tlicho have done in terms of cultural awareness of new people coming in, we talk about that. We talk about different examples of how people can help teachers through the Mentorship Program. For instance in Aklavik, the DEA assigns a community member to work with a new teacher to just help them understand the community, to be integrated into the community. So there are different approaches that are used in different communities.

What we do around the table is share those ideas for how the programs are working and how we might improve in each of our communities the way teachers feel integrated and the way teachers do their job.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the other point I want to make and stress is the communities that have extended grades 10, 11 and 12 in their communities, and their rate of graduating students in those communities have gone up, is my understanding, in terms of the graduates leaving our communities with Grade 12, and we continue to support them to go to post-secondary institutions such as colleges or universities.

Mr. Chairman, the issue I want to look at in program delivery is the amount and the quality of educating Grade 12. Some of these communities don't have Chem 10, 20 or 30, or science or biology, so because of that lack of curriculum in our smaller communities, they're not quite geared to another level of post-secondary education. They're more geared to another avenue of careers. The only way they could go into another level of careers is that they leave those small communities and come to larger centres that do have Chem 10 or Math 10 or Bio 10. I'm just asking the Minister are we not then second grading the careers that we have in our communities in terms of in smaller communities, because of the education you have and the education curriculum, you're into carpentry, plumbing and other areas. In other communities they have a little more chance, they have a little more variety of careers because of the different supplies you have in your school. You can become lawyers and doctors because you have that stuff. I hope that we can alleviate some of that in terms of having the smaller communities play catch-up to some of the larger centres that do have a chemistry lab, have a home economics place, have biology classrooms, classrooms that other communities do enjoy. I wanted to hear from the Minister on that, how we're going to resolve that type of situation that's happening now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the issue of grade extensions, when you take a look at the grad rates, the document I tabled earlier today clearly indicates that doing grade extensions has made a significant difference in terms of the numbers of young people who are staying in school through to completion. There's no question, though, that we can't offer the variety and depth of programming in our smallest communities that we can in a larger community. That's always going to be the situation, just as a high school in Yellowknife doesn't have the same variety of courses that a high school in Edmonton has. You just don't have the economies of scale to be able to offer the same range.

We've started discussing among DECs what we can do to improve on the offerings within those small communities. There are a number of ways that we need to start looking at expanding how we do business to make sure that we can improve on what's available. There's no reason that you can't offer the academic courses at a smaller school.

It may take some work by distance education. Or it may take a school district taking a look at an instructor who moves from the communities, or maybe who's in one community but we set up a video link between the other two, three or four communities in the region. I've talked to the DEAs and the DECs in the regions about how we have to start making some moves in this area to ensure that we are offering the best opportunities possible to our students.

Some of the changes that we're making this year by providing the extra funding for student support, by decreasing the pupil/teacher ratio will also free up resources for other course offerings in the smaller schools. These monies are going to be disproportionate so that the smaller schools are going to see more of the money than the larger schools, though. It's not being handed out on a per capita basis. It should help to improve the flexibility in all schools, but it should be really evident in the smallest schools across the Territories. I'm hoping with that flexibility will come some opportunities for innovative ways to deal with the challenge that we have with broadening out our course selection.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm just trying to get some more clarity on some areas of prescribed funding. When I look at the formula for some of these fundings in school, I see a funding formula that favours custodians versus support workers such as social workers. I'm just curious on why we don't look at prescribed funding that deems schools should have so many staff, such as one maintenance staff, one IT staff, one librarian staff. Why isn't this funding broken out that way? Every school needs a librarian; every school should have an IT person; every school should have at least one maintenance person, I'm sure. Why don't we look at prescribed funding in that element as opposed to a formula base that when you're one pupil short you lose that balance? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All of the school districts and the board chairs and I discuss funding at least twice a year and, at this point, the agreement is that the formula is the best manner in which to divide the monies up. There are all sorts of different ways of looking at it, but what the formula does is it allows the most flexibility so that, for instance, if the schools in Yellowknife determine that they need to have a computer specialist in their classes, they can do that. If that's not seen as important in another school, they can choose to put their money into a phys. ed. teacher. The flexibility is there to allow different communities to have different priorities. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Would the Minister not agree that we should have a formula of what works and what is considered a minimum of schools, rather than basing it solely on formulas because, like I say, if you're short one student, that could have a serious effect on your funding because you don't fall into the next bracket. Therefore, have you even considered the fact that schools need to have a base funding when it's considered representation of staff filling certain positions, like I said, maintenance, IT, librarian, rather than say, well, you don't qualify for a full body in library funding but then again you've got more funding, you figure out how to make it up. Wouldn't it be simpler? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a number of bases in the funding formula. There are a number of things that are base funded. We are looking at, over time, as the discussion ensues with our partners at the DECs, the formula is moving towards one that is more gradual rather than one that has the steps. However, in some cases those steps are there because that's the, you know, if you're talking about hiring one person, you can't hire less than one person, sometimes, to do some jobs. That's why there are some of the steps that are there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, I'd like to make note for the record that although I'm not going to repeat all the zeros, but school community counsellors are one-fourth of the value of the custodian. I'm not the designer of this formula, but then as you look at it, it's kind of a shame that, well maybe more along the lines of one-third but even still, the principle should still stand which is we value custodians three times as much as we value student counsellors. I don't find the formula, in my opinion and from those who I've talked to, is I think the formula holds back certain scenarios and if we want to talk about a true formula, I mean, we should base custodian staff and maintenance staff on square footage of buildings as opposed to how many bodies you can squeeze in that school for the end of September/early October head count. The fact is a school needs maintenance whether it's half-full or it's completely full and I'm telling you, from my experience, kids will wander through, staff will use the whole school and it still needs to be mopped and cleaned and stuff. So in those formulas, I think there's a real gap between what's considered real accountability in the sense that you need people under the right type of context. That's why I say that I see you looking at the formula, to me we undervalue what community counsellors offer and we certainly put a high emphasis on custodians. To me, that almost seems backwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.