We will take a short break and begin with the Department of Education.

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I would like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. At this time,

I would like to ask the Minister of Education if he would be bringing in any witnesses. Mr. Lafferty.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Can the Minister bring in his witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, would you please escort the witnesses in.

Mr. Minister, for the record, can you introduce your witnesses?

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Dan Daniels, deputy minister of ECE and also Paul Devitt, director of business and strategic planning, ECE. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Welcome, witnesses. I believe we are on page 10-10, active position summary, information item. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have just one quick question on this section. Ultimately the number of positions appears to be going up, but there is some drop in position numbers in some of the regional areas. For instance, in the Deh Cho... No, that one is right. Overall, it looks like we have gone down by three. Never mind. I was reading the wrong line and I got myself good and properly confused.

In regional area offices in the department, it has gone down from 54 to 50, whereas the total number of positions in the department has gone up from 191 to 195. Often you hear conversation in this House about regional positions. I am wondering if the department can explain to us why we have a decrease in regional while we have an increase in headquarters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. There has been some increase in various positions. I can highlight just a few of them that will be stationed in Yellowknife: archivist in K to 12 literacy specialist coordinator, community literacy coordinator, and also dealing with the official languages, we have to deal with the court order that was before us, as well, to do our obligation as the Department of Education. Those positions are executive director, planning facilitator, French language administrative assistance, French language client service officer and there is also a literacy coordinator. Those are the positions that have been highlighted. Mahsi, Mr. Chairman.

Are there any other questions on page 10-10? We are on page 10-10, active position summary. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just with the regional area offices positions, I know that

legislatively the Minister did have to increase some positions, but I don’t know if I heard an adequate response why the positions went down in the regions though.

Deputy Minister Daniels.

Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I think I’ll just wait until further details on the other pages that do show better numbers for regional positions. I’ll ask further questions at that time. Thank you.

Okay, we’re on page 10-10, Education, Culture and Employment, active position summary, information item. Agreed?

Agreed. We’ll move to page 10-13, Education, Culture and Employment, directorate and administration, activity summary, operations expenditure summary, $10.219 million. Agreed? Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question -- I hope it belongs here -- with regard to bandwidth and provision for bandwidth within the department, at the schools and so on. My understanding is that ECE is working its way out of the GNWT IT system, in terms of provision of bandwidth anyway, and are going to be sort of having their own portal, for lack of a better way of describing it. I’d like to know where that project is at and what kind of cost is being incurred by the department for this kind of moving away from the total government IT. Thank you.

Director of finance, Mr. Devitt.