Thank you, Madam Chair. Just some comments that I want to address with this particular department. I appreciate all the engagement that we’ve had with this department and their staff over the last few months. I think we really noticed that we needed to put some strong effort into working together and moving forward for this government stemming back from where our Standing Committee on Social Programs strategic planning in Hay River where we really got to look through the department and go into detail and see how things are working over the past few years.

Speaking to some of my colleagues here, we did get some recommendations out of the program review office that at some time we’d like to see addressed within the business plans. If not this one, we do have one coming up in the fall that would make spending our dollars a little bit more efficient, a little bit wiser, and using those dollars into programs where we can see fit. We’ve discussed that at the table with P and P as well as looking at the recommendations from the Office of the Auditor General. I really believe that those recommendations should be addressed and looked at as we move through the business plans.

Like my colleague here Mr. Bromley when we looked at the opening remarks and saw that there was only a 1 percent increase over the previous year’s main estimates, I took that as a concern because throughout this government I know the Minister has brought forth and done some Minister’s statements and press releases on the Aboriginal Student Achievement, language revitalization, elders in the schools. With a 1

percent increase it’s very hard for me to see that these new programs are going to have the support that they need to flourish while we’re still continuing to work on the other areas of our education system that a lot of my colleagues have addressed today.

In particular, the Aboriginal Student Achievement, just to bring it to the attention of the Members here, we had some really good coordinators in Inuvik that were lacking some support in getting what they thought was going to be some good ideas and some good working groups and working with the community to develop this plan, but they didn’t have the support and they both resigned their positions and all the hard work that they put into this so far has kind of gone to the wayside. Now we’re hoping that somebody in the community picks that up. I know that’s a big project that we’ve got going throughout the Northwest Territories. It concerns me that in Inuvik, where we have a lot of resources and a lot of community-based members, which these two members were community based, it makes me wonder how other communities are going to be impacted with the workload of creating this without any kind of financial support or other resources for them to work with.

The Minister did mention that there was, I think, $46 million here for advanced education and employment program. I’d like more information on that to see how we can – that’s a lot of money – better spend those dollars as we move forward in this business plan and it’s not just throwing money at another program here.

Like all my other colleagues have stated, you know, a 52 percent graduation rate is not successful. The way I’ve been putting it when I talk to people back home, I said, you know, you go into Grade 1 and you look at the class and you say, you know, from this point on half this class is going to graduate and the other half, what happens to them? They fall through the cracks. That’s where the emphasis is put on this early childhood development. We have to reach our youth at a very young age, right from birth to three where they’re most critical at learning and taking in all these cognitive, intellectual skills that will prepare them for when they get into the school system.

That said, we also need more child care providers, more licensed establishments. It’s very important. Right now in the Northwest Territories we are lacking those services. The more we lack those services the less opportunity that our youth get a chance to be part of such a growing aspect of our lives. That’s just the importance of our early childhood development.

One thing I wanted to note was the ALCIP, the Aboriginal Language and Cultural Instructor Program. In correspondence previous, it had mentioned that there were no graduates out of that program for the previous two years, and I know we

just went through a graduation session in our communities. I think in Inuvik we actually had some graduates. I don’t know the numbers, but that was very positive to see that that program was finally successful in graduating some of the students that took that program.

I’m also very happy to see that in the work business plans and as we go through them that some legislation on the anti-bullying is going to be brought forth. The sooner we can get acting on that, the safer it will be for our students who are going to school in the fall time.

One other concern was our income support and the Productive Choices Program that the department has addressed. We find that it would be nice to get stats and updates on the Productive Choices Program to see how efficiently it’s working and the impact that it’s having on students that are going to school or on our mental health system, our counselling services as well.

There are a lot of concerns here and I know that as we deliberate over the next couple of days, we’ll work those out and that we can take lessons from this first business plan, as it’s my first business plan session, and we can bring recommendations and look at all the stats and all the facts and all the information that we’ve had since the beginning of this government.

It is a big budget and I respect that and I respect a lot of the projects and the programs that the department has to do within that department. I know it’s not easy, but you’ve got a lot of good, skilled, educated people here to help you out and assist you, as well, and we’re willing to do that.

Those are just my opening comments, Mr. Chair, and I thank you.