Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the dates have nothing to do with or don’t coincide with when the construction of that project will finally be finished. My belief is it won’t be in November 2011, it will in fact be closer to April. That’s the point that I was trying to make there. I’d like to ask the Minister in closing, what exactly will the community be doing for this Opportunities and Involvement Fund? How are they going to be involved in this project?

Again the Member has demonstrated his attitude to this bridge by his predictions that it’s going to be past the deadlines that we’ve laid out for him. I’m not sure what he’s pointing at and using to measure this with. We still anticipate that this project is on schedule. The steel is en route. There’s a significant amount of steel that’s coming forward for the superstructure. There is the decking that will be following. Also the ‘A’ pylons. We expect the steel for the superstructure will be in place by March of this coming next calendar year. Things are going well, as much as that might upset the Member who has been painting this with his brush of doom and gloom.

We still feel it’s necessary to continue to have the community on side. There is a lot of support being provided. There are issues which probably would have put this project to a standstill if we didn’t resolve them, and we feel we’ve done that. We want to continue that partnership. We want the community to have opportunities to benefit from this project in terms of economics and having some resources to invest in that area.

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

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. A couple of questions there. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. As you know, the Student Financial Assistance Program is one of the greatest benefits of all throughout Canada. There is other funding available through DIAND throughout Canada for First Nations students. Dene and Inuit students can apply for USEP funding through that department. That is additional funding on top of the SFA that’s out there.

The Member is referring to upgrading. We currently don’t provide funding for upgrading, but we provide funding for access programs through Aurora College and other institutions, as long as there’s an access program, such as access to nursing, social work, teaching, those types of professions. There’s also ARDA and Income Assistance. That’s another resource that we can provide additional funding from on top of the SFA to meet the standards the students need.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very disappointed in this information. USEP, of course, is a very small fund and it runs out in no time at all. Ask any of these students who are looking for upgrading opportunities. The Minister knows full well that due to our lack of an adequate system... And albeit we may have one of the best Student Financial Assistance Programs in the country, we also have one of the worst records in graduating students who are unqualified for their post-secondary education. I’m looking to meet this need.

USEP clearly doesn’t cover it and we don’t provide upgrading opportunities ourselves. This is a crime.

I’d like to ask if the Minister will commit to providing that funding, a fund specifically dedicated for that. It’s impossible to guess how many students have given up and don’t even apply for the funding now, because of the sort of negative feedback that I’m hearing from through my constituents. Will the department commit to putting those funds in place?

I must say that we’re very proud of the highest aboriginal graduates in the country in the Northwest Territories. We should be proud of that. The school system, we are currently developing an action plan to deal with that through the Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative. We’ve highlighted the core needs of the community. We’ve visited a Sahtu community already. We’re visiting all regions. They’re providing us solutions that are coming from the communities. This is an area we are very serious about.

Also, at the same time, we are going through a review of the Student Financial Assistance Program. Those are the key areas we are currently undergoing. There is also a labour market agreement that provides funding, whether it be training for students that fall through the cracks. This is federal funding that we’ve taken advantage of.

These are just some of the key areas that we are currently covering for funding. SFA is under review. The Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative is on the way. We are making great progress in that area. The action plan will be produced out of that discussion.

Thank you to the Minister for those comments. I’m very pleased to hear that that review is underway.

I want to comment on the Minister noting that we have the highest number of aboriginal student graduates. I’m very happy to hear that and I support that, and I think that does say some good things about our system. However, if we’re graduating students who clearly don’t have the qualifications to go on to post-secondary education, what does that say about that statistic? We can’t hide in statistics and we can’t afford to do that. I would ask this Minister to please commit to lobbying the federal Minister to bump up that USEP program to meaningful dollars, especially recognizing that we have failed in graduating qualified students.

I want to reassure that we are not hiding anything within our system. We provide any data that’s available on the Northwest Territories education system, because we want to be transparent and we want to be accountable to what’s before us. That’s the very reason why we’re going throughout the Northwest

Territories in all regions to deal with the education matters. We are very concerned about that. We want to come to a solution. There is a solution at the grassroots, communities, who we are seeking advice from. It is happening. The federal, yes, we continuously lobby them through Education, Justice, federal/provincial/territorial Justice Ministers meetings constantly. The First Nations students are being represented at that level and we continually lobby the federal government for additional funding. With limited and also the small jurisdictions, we seem to be always left out, compared to other reservations that receive funding. Those are the areas we continue to have our discussion and possibly have a separate agreement, our uniqueness of the Northwest Territories. I will continue to support that.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister’s commitments there. I acknowledge that in fact we do, we are very open about these things. Who I’m hearing from, of course, are my constituents who are trying to upgrade. I want to make the point that these are young people who are often starting families, or perhaps are single parents who have extra needs perhaps beyond the norm. They are facing these challenges. I hope and, I guess, I would ask the Minister to commit and consider these aspects of these students without appropriate certificates for pursuing post-secondary, that they be considered in this review and be addressed in the solutions offered in that review.

I’m sure that will be part of the discussion, because there will be a wide range of discussions with the public as well. Any input from the Members will be greatly appreciated, and also the Northwest Territories. If we make changes, it has to benefit the Northwest Territories as well. Definitely this is an area that I’m excited about and I’m looking forward to those changes as well.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for Human Resources some questions about this government’s succession planning.

Our public service workforce is always aging. I guess we’re always all aging.

---Interjection

I don’t know, I got an e-mail from somebody the other day who told me they

saw me on TV and said I should go see a hairdresser. Seriously.

---Laughter

Oh, the feedback we get.

Anyway. Our public service is aging. It is prudent for us as a government to do succession planning to find out how we can take people who are interested in careers in the public service and provide them with the professional development, the training, and the opportunities they need to advance in the public service. I have had an inquiry from a constituent who was concerned about an individual who was direct appointed to an associate deputy position, but I believe this person may have been a part of some kind of a program to make sure we have adequate senior level bureaucrats in place for these positions. I thought it might be helpful if the Minister of HR could describe for us what programs the government has in place to create opportunity for people to advance themselves in our public service.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a government, our greatest resource, our greatest asset is our human resources and it’s very important for us to make sure that we have a qualified public service in order to do all the work that we need them to do.

The Member is correct that our public service is aging. The average age is 44 years old. That’s the average age of our public service. Sixty-three percent of our employees are over 40 years old. Obviously we need to pay a lot of attention to succession planning. Specifically in the senior management category, over the next five years 40 percent of our senior management cohort is eligible to retire, and over 10 years 54 percent of our senior managers are eligible to retire as well. Obviously, we have a big job ahead of us.

Our Human Resource Strategic Plan identified the need for our government to develop a Succession Planning Strategy, and we're working very hard on that right now.

In years gone past there were programs that were well known to people in the public service. My colleague Mr. Beaulieu, for example, entered the public service under a trainee program, where a trainee for a position was paired up, so to speak, with somebody in senior management and was sent out also for professional development to enhance their skills to become managers in various aspects of government service. What programs exist today? That was called a trainee program. I understand there’s been a MAP program in more recent years. What other opportunities are there that public servants can

access now if they want to advance their career with the public service?

Several years ago, when the Department of Personnel was decentralized, the training money was allocated to the departments. There are a number of programs. Right now we have a leadership program with the government. People can apply to be part of this program. Generally they need some support from the department and we have regular training modules that have been established through the University of Alberta. We also have an Associate Director Superintendent Program for aboriginal people whereby we’re trying to increase the number of aboriginal people in senior management positions. We have been working through utilization of transfer assignments whereby we can allow people to obtain experience in different levels of management so that they can move on to higher levels as they progress.

Our Human Resource Strategic Plan 20/20 recognizes that we want to encourage government employees to take advantage of lifelong learning so that they can advance their careers within the government. We are developing a draft succession planning discussion paper. We will be introducing a pilot program and we will be developing a succession planning framework for the government to follow, and we expect that next year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Before I go on, Members, I would just like to draw your attention to the rules that we have. Half of the Members haven’t asked a question yet and we only have 15 minutes left in question period, so both questions and answers, try to maybe shorten them up. Supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The concern I had raised to me by a constituent was someone who had entered into a certain government department at an associate deputy position. Is it the position of this government that skills at the deputy minister/associate deputy minister level are transferable between departments without any really specific experience or having worked their way up in the ranks in that particular discipline or area of program delivery? Thank you.

Our government operates on the basis of merit, so employees that progress through different promotions and different employment opportunities either compete for the jobs and get them on their own merit or if they are direct appointed or on a transfer assignment. It’s based on merit. Senior level positions like deputies and associate deputy ministers, my experience is that the senior management skills are transferrable; that if you’re working with one department, generally you should be able to manage different levels of departments, and we recognize that in our

deputy minister cohort where we have different levels of deputy ministers. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.