Thank you, Mr. Chair. There were a number of things in the opening remarks from the Minister that I appreciated. One of them -- no surprise -- is the extra dollars going towards early childhood and family literacy. I think there still seems to be a focus on the kindergarten and up sort of age groups and I’m hoping, ultimately, we will focus that more and more to the earliest years. But that’s good to see.
The $1.3 million towards promoting attendance is a good response, I think, to what has been highlighted as a major concern. I think it’s been noted that kids actually miss a couple years of their schooling by the time they’ve been in school six or eight years. So that’s a big hole to plug. And the promotional campaign for parents’ awareness is good, but as, I think, my colleague Ms. Bisaro mentioned, a big gap I see is the murkiness and confusion associated with the different diplomas that can be sought in grade 12 and the agony that that leads to when students and their parents realize they cannot go on to university because of the choices they have unknowingly made. So, yes, there does need to be more counselling of the students, but I’d say a big part of that counselling should also be focused on the parents so that they’re knowledgeable and aware.
The Standing Committee on Social Programs has, for three years now, mentioned the need for some new programs in Aurora College that respond to today’s world and some of the government priorities and residential and business priorities we have, and that’s sustainable communities management, all the skills that go into managing a sustainable community in a progressive way, and the renewable energy technician. Try and get any kind of a renewable energy installed here and generally you’re looking to bring some expertise in from outside. These are a high need, real business opportunities and so on. This has been raised with the Minister many times through the committee and we’re still waiting on a response there, and it could extend to greening of the trades programs that are already in place.
I want to comment on the latest expression on the destination of $400,000 for something to do with nutritious foods. Again, the Social Programs committee has called clearly, with the support of the public, for a milk subsidy program repeatedly and repeatedly. This government has failed to put that in place. Like I say, in the last couple of weeks they’ve apparently come up with an idea to establish and coordinate an NWT Nutritious Food Steering Committee. Who’s going to be on that committee? Government departments? Non-government organizations? Other stakeholders? I can’t help but wonder how much that’s going to cost of that $400,000. It would be so beautiful, Mr. Chair, to see those dollars directed into the mouths of babes with good nutritious food, rather than talking
about it and studying it. My gosh, the number of studies we’ve got. So a big disappointment there. I’ll be asking more questions about that.
I think the early childhood programs are a move in the right direction. We also need a lot more child care subsidy programs. This is a big factor in helping us with poverty issues, you know, related to getting an education and so on. I’ll be asking some questions about that along the way. That’s an opportunity that I see. We should be using… I see a revenue. We’ll talk about that in relation to child care as well.
The official languages, again, I haven’t seen a comprehensive response to the work done by committee and the strategy in a way that reflects the priorities that I think the people have spoken to. The Aboriginal Languages Summer Institute and the conference, are those priorities that were established in that strategy by the people and were they the highest priorities? Is that where we should be starting out and how does that fit in the plan of the department to put a comprehensive approach in place given our failure on the language issue?
The income security, I also have been very pleased to see the Public Housing Rental Subsidy returned to its home. One thing that I keep hearing from people is the service aspect highlighted the other day in a Member’s statement and it’s not restricted to the seniors heating subsidy, it’s through many aspects of the Income Support Program. So I would like to know how the department is going to be tuning that up. I don’t see it in the budget, but hopefully there is much more progressive work and training being done there so we can give good quality assurance to our clients.
I was happy to see the increase to student financial assistance. It seems to be similar, maybe a little bit more than we had for the merit-based programs, which is kind of curious. I’d be interested in more details on that and we’ll get to that when we go to detail, Mr. Chair. For now, that will be it and I’ll leave my general comments at that. Mahsi.