Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to table a Memorandum of Understanding on Development of Residual Heat Distribution System

between the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Pursuant to section 5 of the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act, I wish to table the Summary of Members’ Absences for the period October 18, 2007 to May 26, 2009.

Item 14, notices of motion. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, I will give notice that on Monday, June 8, 2009, I will move the following motion: Now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Nahendeh, that this Legislative Assembly strongly recommends that the Department of Transportation take immediate action to identify the funds and resources necessary to complete the runway extensions in Fort Good Hope and Deline; and further, recommends that the Department of Transportation take immediate action to identify the funds and resources necessary to undertake runway improvements, including runway lights, in the communities of Nahanni Butte and Jean Marie River.

Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time I will be seeking unanimous consent to deal with this motion today.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Item 15, notices of motions for the first reading of bills. Item 16, motions. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to move a motion on the Student Financial Assistance Scholarship Program.

WHEREAS the 2009-2010 Main Estimates eliminated the Student Financial Assistance Scholarship Program;

AND WHEREAS the awards were relied upon by students in managing their finances while at college or university;

AND WHEREAS the purpose of the Student Financial Assistance Program is to assist in meeting the costs of education and the purpose of scholarships is separate and distinct in that they recognize scholastic achievement;

AND WHEREAS these merit-based awards were also of value as an indication of achievement in competition for other scholarships and bursary opportunities;

AND WHEREAS students anticipating scholarships were given little notice of the termination of the Scholarship Program, upsetting crucial financial planning;

AND WHEREAS there is a clear need and responsibility to provide students with transitional scholarship funding during a period of dramatic change;

AND WHEREAS there may be some real need to reduce these costs in the immediate future;

NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, that the Student Financial Assistance scholarships awarded by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment be reinstated for the 2009-2010 fiscal year;

AND FURTHER, that the value of the awards should be equal to half of the value of the scholarship amounts issued under each category in fiscal year 2008-2009, with further reductions to be introduced in each category in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The motion is on the floor. The motion is in order. To the motion. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Mr. Bromley, I understand that you did not read the entire motion. So I will give you an opportunity to finish off the motion. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to begin by noting the document in our blue binder somehow left out that last paragraph. In our double-sidedness, we somehow missed that. So the last line is:

AND FURTHERMORE, that a redesign of the program be undertaken with the primary intent of providing, on a continuing basis, recognition of academic excellence.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The motion is on the floor. The motion is in order. To the motion. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First, Mr. Speaker, as the motion clearly says, I believe the Student Financial Assistance Program has a good

record of supporting our students with wide and generous allowances as good or better than any in Canada.

We were told the Scholarship Fund was unsubscribed at about $100,000, but find over $380,000 was allocated this past year. Under this misunderstanding and without any consultation with the public, we let the program be terminated. However, we now understand this sudden and complete action has left many students in the lurch financially and they have lost a tool for competing for additional financial support. Even though the budget is passed, it is not too late to improve the handling of this matter.

There is action we can take that is actually responsible, recognizes merit and greatly reduces cost. Mr. Speaker, given that the current level of Student Financial Assistance Program support is healthy and appropriate, given my belief that more focus is required in early childhood education where big returns are to be had and, finally, that we do have limited resources, I can accept the need for a considerably scaled back Scholarship Program.

However, the program should have been scaled back in a transitional way so that those counting on it were not left hanging. Also, there is important value and merit-based recognition, both psychologically for motivating and encouraging students and for their use in competing for further financial support. We can correct this by reinstating transitional dollars for the program to an increasingly reduced level this year and next and by redesigning the program to indeed recognize academic achievement accompanied by a more modest financial reward.

Mr. Speaker, this matter is urgent. Students have long since begun preparations for the next school year. With a sudden and complete elimination of our only merit-based program, we have left scholarship recipients high and dry and financially struggling. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater by eliminating the good of the more modest recognition program.

We need to fund a transitional program and institute a modified merit-based recognition program at low cost, and we need to take a closer look at how well student financial assistance is working and how it fits into the lifelong experience of education.

As I have often stated in the House, my belief is the area of early childhood education is now recognized as laying the foundation to maximize the potential for later learning and needs additional emphasis in our allocation of education dollars. I am willing to accept, in balancing our priorities and recognizing the rapid growth of the scholarship beyond its original intent, that we need to scale the scholarship dollars back, but let’s do this responsibly, acknowledge the value of recognizing academic merit, and do it in a transitional way that

both respect some of our hardest working students and demonstrates our awareness of people’s needs and the need for government to act responsibly.

I look forward to any further discussion from my colleagues and immediate action from the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

It gives me great pleasure to second this motion and I truly believe and we have to continue to lay down a solid foundation for our youth who wish to pursue post-secondary education.

Mr. Speaker, over the lunch hour, I had a chance to go out and meet several students who had shown a fond example of demonstrating their concerns through a democratic approach. They were out there with signs and placards. It was really nice to meet the students and the parents, as well as some of the supporters, who were some high school students looking forward enough to say wait a minute, these are opportunities that could take away from us. We want to make sure they are there so it can help empower their education goals.

Mr. Speaker, I am a full supporter of merit-based education. These grants can help focus in on that and cause like a carrot to remind students to work just a little bit harder and perhaps they would be rewarded. Mr. Speaker, taking that chance away sort of takes away some of that motivation and I think that’s shameful.

Mr. Speaker, I am wholeheartedly in agreement that if we keep the Scholarship Program high, as one of the things that gets reviewed and discussed further, we have to build in a component and return a service. Mr. Speaker, if we take the approach of setting them just as grants and based on merit-based only, well then, Mr. Speaker, the numbers being subscribed today need to be re-evaluated.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to stress that investing in education is one of the best choices our government and future governments can make and it does little for investing into the future of our youth by taking it away from them.

Mr. Speaker, this supports and recognizes their hard work and I am certainly behind the students and I stand with them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that, at the outset, I am fully in support of this motion and I am very pleased that my colleagues have brought this motion forward. I feel that there was an error when this particular program was removed from the budget

and I think we need to correct that error, and this motion will do that.

One of the things that I think that needs to be noted is that the purpose of the scholarships is very different from the purpose of the grants and loans which are available through the department of student financial assistance, through ECE. The purpose of these scholarships is they are awarded on merit. These are not scholarships which are available to every student. They are only available to those students who attain the marks and actually earn them.

I think it’s important to also note that merit-based scholarships are not readily available throughout for all kinds of students. I think most students would agree that merit-based scholarships for somebody pursuing an arts or a science degree is unlikely…There aren’t very many. Students are unlikely to find them, whereas here are specifically targeted scholarships which are quite readily available. I think that it needs to be noticed that the student financial assistance scholarships are the only part of student financial assistance which is based on merit.

I think also that there was an error when we erred in taking this item out of the budget, we erred in terms of not providing notice to students. Yes, they were given notice but they were given notice at the end of the fiscal year, in March. They were preparing for exams in April and they had very little opportunity to readjust their financing to consider what they were going to do come school year to start again in the fall.

I think there is an opportunity for us to reinstate at somewhat of a reduced level for this fiscal year, 2009-10, and then a gradual reduction over following years, as has been suggested by the motion so that eventually we return to probably the levels of scholarships that were awarded in and around 2001. Those were amounts that were much less than what the current amounts are. I think there is value, as the motion says, in having scholarships, which basically is a recognition of the achievement of the students but they’re not a large cash award. I think that goes to Mr. Hawkins’ comment about a return of service. A small cash award doesn’t really require a return of service. Some of the large awards that we currently did give probably did require a return of service.

So I think we certainly need to look at a redesign of the Scholarship Program and that is also something that is called for in the motion. I think there needs to be a look at the amounts that are awarded, look at how the amounts are awarded, what level of marks are required for various levels and I think bottom line, we need to reinstate at least 50 percent of the scholarship funding that was eliminated from last year’s or this current year’s budget. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I will not be supporting this motion because I believe this program is not fair or fairly distributed to the Northwest Territories. A lot of our schools in the smaller communities, from kindergarten to Grade 12, are only a general program. A lot of students don’t have access to science labs or even biology classes, in most cases, where you can achieve these bursaries. In our case, we don’t have the success because of the programs and services being delivered by the Department of Education throughout the Northwest Territories. It does not give the students the same allocation or same ability to achieve these results and take advantage of these types of programs.

It’s a $400,000 program, Mr. Speaker. If anything, this government should take a look at all bursary programs with regard to the Student Financial Assistance Program and make sure those programs are accessible for all students in the Northwest Territories and not those ones who are receiving a higher level of education because of where they live. I, for one, feel that this is something that has to be considered and something this government has to seriously look at. I am glad the Department of Education is considering looking at these other options so that we can have shop programs in high schools in our communities; have biology labs in our schools and be able to receive the higher level of education throughout the Northwest Territories in all our schools. I think this definitely shows there is a distinct difference between the quality of education and the quantity of education of where it is being provided and the ability of people to take advantage of these types of programs. This Bursary Program, just about all of them, are received in the larger centres, specially in Yellowknife.

Again, I won’t be supporting this motion.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr…I am first going to go to the Minister from Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

---Laughter

Thank you very much for your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, for me to speak on this motion. I, too, have not seen or am convinced that there are many benefits to people in my riding, but these higher end scholarships, as people have been telling me it’s called, and we are just barely graduating from our schools in the regions and this is something that is not really benefitting.

I do see a bit of a need for some merit-based system and as we deliberated this issue in our committee rooms, we found out through some

research from a colleague of mine, Mr. Glen Abernethy, that the original intent was a merit-based system to acknowledge hardworking students in our schools, in our graduate classes, in universities and to achieve the high, top marks. At that time, I think it was about 2001, it wasn’t an award that had a lot of money there, Mr. Speaker. It was a small award. I think it was $500 for high school, up to $1,500 for graduate programs, but now we’ve got this very bloated program. We’ve got like $10,000 for doctors, $5,000 for graduate programs and that’s something that the Ministry of Education, Culture and Employment is correct, it can’t sustain something like that. It will balloon up to like a $400,000 program and that kind of money can certainly be used in the smaller communities to support and sustain other programs that can assist our smaller communities as they move through our education system.

The motion speaks about…Maybe the Member can correct me if I’m wrong about some kind of prorated system where if you knock it down to 50 percent this year…That’s not something I can support either, Mr. Speaker.

I would support a return to the original programming at not a very significant cost, but to have a sense of entitlement, these people should continue with the graduated reduction in their scholarship is not something I can support at this time, Mr. Speaker. So I will be voting against the motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say a few things on the motion. I would like to thank Mr. Bromley for bringing forward this motion. Anything that we have to have some discussions with students and education, it’s always an important issue in the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, over the last couple of years, we’ve had to buckle down in terms of having debates on some very tough issues on very important programs that are out there. Because of the financial situation we are in, there are programs that need to be looked at and we have to make some decisions as to the priorities.

From the Sahtu region, we are fighting and we are wanting to…(inaudible)…educational programs in our smaller schools and smaller educational systems. We are still of the opinion that the level of quality of education is not quite fair right across the board. I talked to the educational superintendent from the Sahtu region. He certainly would love more high school students in our region, more programs in our regions and we seem to be reminded by the department that there is a limited amount of funding and certainly with the release of the language report, you know how strong that report is in terms of some major shifts and

discussion to preserve the aboriginal languages in the Northwest Territories.

I am not convinced that the elimination of this program here, it needs to be put back. I think we need to look at the small communities, so I will also not be supporting this motion. I think more emphasis needs to be on discussions on our schools in our smaller communities where education has really been needed to support the community level at all costs and maintain those types of services or even enhance it to a level that we will feel comfortable that we are on the same level playing field with other regions and centres. Some of our communities would like to have chemistry classes or biology classes or extra teachers in the schools to help with the teaching of the programs that they are doing right now.

I do want to thank Mr. Bromley for bringing this motion forward. However, I will not be supporting it at this time.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Mr. Bromley for the thought he put into this motion and for bringing this motion forward. I disagree with the rapidness -- is that a word -- rapidness with which this program was pulled out from under these students. I think at the very least it should have been phased out and those already anticipating support through this program should have been grandfathered into it. We all know that the cost of post-secondary education, even with student financial assistance, is very expensive, and very many of our northern students, as any other student who graduates from university, usually starts off with a serious and significant debt that they need to repay and I think that anything that encourages our students to strive for excellence in their education at any level is worthwhile.

Certainly I can understand from some of the other Members that they think this is not a priority and its level of spending is not sustainable; however, I think that the unanticipated removal of this support, the way that it was done, is unacceptable and I will be supporting the motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank all of the students who were in front of the Legislative Assembly building. I would like to thank them for coming and supporting the students who are out there. I would also like to thank the Members for their comments on this specific motion that is before us.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would just like to point out that there is one thing that all Northerners can agree upon, and that is the importance of making sure all northern children and youth have a strong education for the future.

We are working to strengthen the continuum of lifelong education beginning in early childhood, as Members have alluded to, and continue for life. We need to ensure Northerners are trained and raised to take advantage of opportunities that are before us and that will exist in this Territory for decades to come.

The Government of the Northwest Territories is committed to education of NWT residents. This year our GNWT will invest close to $270 million in educating our people. This money pays for schools and teachers in the communities across the North, provides support for apprenticeship and career training, support for operation of Aurora College, and helps NWT students access post-secondary education through the SFA Program.

Mr. Speaker, this government offers one of the most generous Student Financial Assistance Programs in the country. Over 1,400 NWT students are currently pursuing their education goals annually with the assistance of the GNWT program. We are providing over $14 million in grants and loans to our students to help offset their costs associated with education, including tuition, books, travel costs and living expenses.

We don’t pay for everything, Mr. Speaker, but we do provide a substantial level of assistance to help keep the cost of education from becoming a barrier to most of the students.

Unlike most of the other Canadian jurisdictions, the GNWT does not require most of the NWT students with their families to undergo income testing. NWT students who enroll in an approved post-secondary program or course are eligible to receive student financial assistance from the GNWT regardless of their family income.

Unlike most other Canadian jurisdictions, many NWT students do not, I repeat, do not have to pay back their loans, which can be forgiven if they return to the Northwest Territories, which we all hope that they will eventually come back to the North and work for us upon the completion of their studies.

Our policy of hiring students during the summer months gives northern students a chance to gain job experience while making competitive wages.

Mr. Speaker, our government practice of hiring extends its commitment even further. Over the past year and a half, this government has taken a careful look at its budget. Even before the current global economic slowdown, we needed to reduce our spending to bring it into line with our revenues, to ensure that we can sustain a level of

programming and services that the people of the Northwest Territories need from their government. We’ve had to make some decisions about where to spend our money and where to make some reductions.

Where we’ve had to make difficult choices, difficult decisions, we have acted to protect those programs and investment to help a greater number of students, the people of the North. Until this year, Mr. Speaker, the GNWT has been able to offer academic scholarships. Based on academic success, these scholarships provide an average of 100 students a year with financial awards over and above amounts already available under the SFA Program.

I am proud of these students who are achieving at the highest academic level. However, their needs cannot be considered greater than those of other students and it is important to maintain the grant and loan benefits afforded to all northern post-secondary students.

Mr. Speaker, we regret the impact these reductions will have on the scholarship recipients. We will continue, however, to support these students with grants and loans, which continue to be available to all SFA recipients, and by promoting a variety of scholarship programs provided by the private sector.

I appreciate the meaningful commentary that’s been offered by the students and MLAs here, and also the family members. But please understand that we value education. That’s why we’re here. We are pleased to see young Northerners with strong voices and a will to succeed. That is why we are asking in the long term to protect one of the best SFA programs in Canada.

Just for the record, the Cabinet will be abstaining from voting on this matter, on the motion, since it’s a direction to the government.