Minister Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I think this area that we’re referring to, as the deputy alluded to…. It will be distributed among other staff members in that particular department. I guess the rationale for cutting this position was the demands for job requirements for NWT students that are involved with Alberta achievement testing that the Member highlighted — 5 per cent — and also rescheduling of the Towards Excellence document’s biyearly schedule.

So it’s just, I think, more of allocating the duties to the existing staff that we have on hand. That’s part of the decision that we made as a department. Mahsi.

Would the Minister have any thoughts as to, now, if we distribute the duties, we’re now creating similar jobs? In other departments, I see that, you know, when jobs are all similar and they don’t just point the finger at one person; they — whether I agree or disagree — they…. When you’re losing one position out of a group of positions, you get everyone to apply. Therefore, you still keep the best and most qualified staff on strength.

I’m just wondering if that approach is being reconsidered in this particular case, because that sounds like we’ve taken one job; we’ve given people their duties. But we’re now telling them that they can’t apply for the job. We’ve just sort of given the job to someone else. I guess I’m just trying to understand that methodology.

The duties of that position are spread out within the department, the staff that

we currently have. So once we eliminate this position, really there’s no position there. We felt that the 5 per cent for achievement tests and also the other remaining 95 per cent, the workload carries on with the other staff members that we had on board, and we will be scheduled to actually list the frequent reporting of the position. So that’s part of the reason why we’ve initiated this process.

Just one last question at this second, Mr. Chair, and I can go into further details that this position actually comes up on.

But I think Mr. Devitt had made mention, in some form or fashion, that this position has yet to be placed. Is it anticipated that as the Minister has a vacancy, assuming it goes forward in this form — the budget, that is — is there a position that this person will be placed in?

Certainly the opportunity is there within Mr. Devitt’s department, so we are exploring other options out there within our department. Mahsi.

Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of questions with regard to the active positions as well. Relative to the coordinator position, I just heard the Minister state that there will be less reporting due to the loss of this particular position, and I guess it led me to wonder: does the department not think that there’s a value in the assessment and evaluation that this particular position is currently doing? How will less reporting allow education authorities to keep to the high standards of programming that we want them to adhere to?

Deputy Minister Daniels.

I accept the explanation, but I guess we have to disagree. I also would like to ask the department if more of an onus is now going to be on education authorities to provide some of this reporting, will they be getting funding to allow them to do that to the standard that is required?

Minister of Education.

Mahsi, Mr.

Chairman.

This is one area that we did talk about as a department. Certainly, we need to look at various options, because we do still have a three-year planning process. We need to work with the organizations at the community level, the education authorities. Some do have a tendency to continue with the AATs. They do have that flexibility to do so.

At one point in time the Alberta achievement test was free for the Northwest Territories, but they started charging us $500,000 a year. Based on that, we figured eliminating that area would save us money over time, but at the same time there is interest from education authorities to continue with the process. There are functional grade levels and also assessment tools that each education authority has, and they continue checking their students in that area.

I understand, Mr. Minister, that the cost of the Alberta achievement test is pretty prohibitive, but I heard you say that you’re going to have the education authorities do more of their own reporting. I wasn’t thinking of the testing so much but of the reporting that the department is going to require of them. If they’re doing more of the reporting that is currently and previously was done by the department, will they get extra funding to allow them to do that?

This is something that we may have to look at. There aren’t currently…. We don’t really have plans in place at this point. Certainly, we’ll take that as notice. We’ll certainly work within our department.

I guess I would suggest to the department that if you’re considering spending money or giving money to the education authorities to do this reporting, perhaps you should keep this position.

Another question that’s in a bit of different area, but I’d like to know whether or not the department at this point has any vacant positions.

At this time we’re not aware of any vacant positions, but there are staff members moving on and being recruited at the same time, so at this point we don’t have an actual number of vacant positions.

I’m not sure I quite understood that, but I think I heard you say there aren’t any long-term vacant positions at this point. The only vacant positions are ones that have been vacant for a short period of time. Could I get that confirmed please?

Yes, Mr. Chairman, that’s true.

I have one other question. We received some information from the department — the Standing Committee on Social Programs — in response to one of our questions. It has to do with the active positions, and it’s a note at the bottom of the page under Strategic Initiatives, which indicates that the addition of 3.5 positions for Strategic Initiatives excludes a Trade Initiative estimate of approximately 20 education authority teaching positions for ‘08–09. I’d like to get clarification of what that note means. When I read it, I take it to mean that the education authorities will be hiring 20 positions spread across all the authorities, I presume. If I could get some comment on that, please.

The information that the Member is sharing is toward the PTR status. Mahsi.

Thank you, and that’s what I assumed it was, but does that suggest that the education authorities are going to be hiring an extra…? Over all of the education authorities, are their numbers of staff going to increase by 20? Thank you.

Mr. Chair, yes that’s correct — the number of PYs toward the education authorities. Mahsi.

Thank you. I’ll just leave it for now, but I do have a question in relation to that when we come to staffing for the education authorities.