Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a number of comments in no particular order. I will kind of go through the Minister’s opening remarks.
Initially, in the first page, I am pleased to see that we are working to increase the opportunities, I guess, for film within the NWT. We are starting to have quite a strong industry here. I think, along with Industry, Tourism and Investment, ECE has to recognize that we need to change the assistance we give to our film industry. I think that thought is there, but I don’t see anything in the Minister’s remarks in terms of money or a different way of assisting filmmakers to entice them to come to the NWT and to make movies here. I think it’s an area where we need to change our policy. I believe there is some thought being given to it, but I don’t see any evidence from either ITI or ECE that that is coming.
Under official languages, I am disappointed that there is no reference to any upcoming legislation in and around the Official Languages Act. There was a review of the Official Languages Act in the 16th Assembly and there were recommendations to make some changes to legislation to collapse the two boards into one. That recommendation has been sitting there for quite some time. I have yet to see any indication that the legislation is being worked on to make the Aboriginal languages boards more efficient. I think at this point we’re wasting money and I don’t think we have any money to waste.
There is a mention in the Minister’s remarks about it says 1.4 dollars more. I suspect that is supposed to be $1.4 million. However, we are spending $7.7 million on early childhood development programs and that’s about $1.4 million more than was budgeted for 2012-13, not to the revised estimates but to the budgeted estimates. I do believe that from the budgeted 2012-13 estimates, we added approximately $1 million at the request of
committee. That means we have an increase in this budget of about $.4 million, $400,000. If that’s the case, that’s not a heck of a lot. In terms of what committee is looking for, I don’t think it will do the trick in what we think we need to have to increase early childhood development.
Under the K to 12 education and libraries, there is a mention of a broad-based review of the NWT education system. I look forward to asking some questions of the Minister as to what that review is and what is anticipated to be accomplished with that.
I know, to the bottom of that page, there is some discussion about inclusive schooling programs. The department is working with education authorities to improve the delivery of student supports. I couldn’t agree more that that is something that is absolutely necessary, but I’m not so sure that just improving the supports is what we need. We need to provide a different method of providing those supports to our education districts and our education authorities. The way that we are currently funding inclusive schooling is not equitable. It’s not providing funds to the boards that have students with greater needs. The broad brush 18 percent across-the-board approach is not allowing boards to provide the supports that are needed to those students who have great needs.
I noted it talks about building a more effective evidence-based program and I totally agree with that philosophy. I think that is absolutely the way we have to go, but I think it’s going to require a very comprehensive and research–based look at how we currently fund our inclusive schooling across the board. If we don’t rely on evidence, and some of that evidence would be those students who require far greater support than others. There are some that just simply require about half an hour of extra instruction and there are others that require a full-time aide all day, and sometimes some of them require two aides all day, but schools are not funded based on the needs of the students and they should be.
Advanced education, the department will action recommendations from the Adult Literacy and Basic Education review. It’s good to see that we’re going to move forward on that. That review was done some time ago. I will have some questions as to what that means when we come to that section of the budget.
With income support I have concerns, as does my colleague Mr. Moses. We spend a huge amount of money on income support and I don’t think that we look seriously at our policies around income support, our policies around housing, our policies around all our other subsidy programs. I don’t think we look at those policies with a view as to whether they are complementary or whether they are contradictory for the clients that are getting income
support. I think we end up with policies that create barriers for our income support clients.
I think the other problem with income support is there is not a lot of flexibility on the part of the income assistance officers to be a little flexible in their assessments. I get the impression that we provide the officers with a computer program, they plug in a bunch of numbers or a situation, and out comes an answer and that’s it. There’s no if’s, and’s or but’s. There’s no variation. There’s no flexibility on the part of the officer to provide a bit of a different funding model for a particular client. I think that that’s something which we need to look at.
If my information is correct, the last time there was a fairly comprehensive review of the income support or Income Assistance Program, it was almost six years ago. I think it was 2007. I think that’s something we should probably seriously consider doing. Times have changed and computers are great, but computers don’t look at the human need. Computers look at numbers and specifics, and we have to look at what the humans need.
I am really pleased to see that we have an increase in the numbers of families accessing Child Care User Subsidy benefits. That’s been a program which really wasn’t working very well, and whatever change has been made, usage has increased substantially, so I’m really glad to see that.
Lastly, Mr. Chair, with regard to technology for our schools, we are somewhat hampered at this point because we don’t have access to high speed Internet in many places. With the coming of the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic link, which looks like we may have something in two and a half or three years’ time, I will have some questions to the Minister and the department about how we are going to use that new technology that we will have access to, and how we will change our education program based on the new technology, and the faster speeds, and the access to more things worldwide. That’s it. Thanks, Mr. Chair.