Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have some concerns about some of these changes. Obviously, the superintendent, one of the reasons I’ve had more concerns is he’s in the South Slave. I guess the one main area of concern is how this reporting would go. I know the Minister talked about how the reporting wouldn’t change, but I guess the difficulty comes in the fact that now you have a superintendent that’s a government employee but also reporting to a board at the same time, the DEC. I guess how that individual will be conflicted, obviously, from his boss versus the people that direct him on the initiatives. I would use recent discussions about our Junior Kindergarten as an example. We have the department who are the bosses and will be paying his wages and yet the direction of the DEC was that there was difficulty they were having with implementation of that. I guess my concern will be the reporting.

In difficult times, I think on most issues this wouldn’t be a factor. Most of the day-to-day operations I can understand the superintendent working with the DEC and not even having to deal with the government most of the time on day-to-day operations, but in the critical decision times there are times to criticize the GNWT about some of the implementations of any program or funding budgets. Some of those types of items, I think it’s going to be difficult for that superintendent to tell his bosses – and I say “he” because in the South Slave we have a male superintendent – the people that sign the cheque, that this is the problem that we have, we need to fix this. I think that’s one of the issues we’ve been pushing for Junior Kindergarten, as an example, this was an issue.

So I have difficulties with this as far as superintendents becoming GNWT employees, and I understand some of the rationale behind doing it, but there’s that main issue of the reporting process and when it comes down to some tough decisions, and they may only be five or 10 percent of the time, but at that time it’s going to be critical when you need a superintendent to fight for the DEC. How much can you really fight when he’s giving direction and concerns to his boss? So that is definitely a concern.

The other area of concern that we’ve heard from our DEA was just the fact that our superintendent has a great deal of education and can he keep the same type of individuals that you want. Doctorates, let’s say, for a superintendent. Would you be able to keep that type of individual if they’re a government employee and on a pay grid? My understanding is that as superintendents come in, they’ll be red circled for whatever their wages are if they are above the existing pay grade, but the difficulty comes in the fact that don’t we want the best person that we can possibly get in our system. That would be limited because we have a set wage, we have a set amount of money that we can pay this individual. Sometimes when those people have a doctorate, they may be able to get work other places for bigger money. So, obviously, are we getting the best people in our education? Yes, we can find people that are educated and do a job, but are we getting the best people that we want to get in this system?

So those are the two main areas that I have concern with on the changes to this act. Thank you, Mr. Chair.