Thank you, Madam Chair. I will certainly take your advice on this one here and I will make comments on his opening comments. I will follow that procedure.
Since these are opening comments, I do want to say that it is good to have students who are going out from the North or in the Northwest Territories, especially from outside the Territories. It encourages them to come back and bring these skills back with educational knowledge and be positive role models in our communities. I know that Aboriginal students are taking advantage of it through the grants. I know a grant is only limited and they’re only allowed a certain number of semesters before the grant runs out. SFA has that in the policy, and sometimes the Aboriginal students feel that they’re treated differently from the rest of the population. If the semesters are taken up or the funding is being used to the maximum, they no longer are eligible for it and they want to continue on with another type of career, because it takes them awhile to get into that requirement for this type of education. Say if they want to become a lawyer or study, they have used up their semester, I call it points, then I guess that’s when they’ll have to look at the loan system and see if they’re eligible, and according to the Minister, as long as they come back and live in the North, that shows true repatriation of our students.
I’m a little concerned when students who come to the North, raised in the North, and take advantage of our generosity because they don’t have to go to the banks. One thing I always found curious when I met with the students down south, they said they’re paying off their loan. I didn’t understand that, that they had, to the banks or some other institution, to pay off their loans. We see a lot of those students in our schools right now or in our health centres. People who are young who say they’re paying off their loans working up here. I never understood that. I thought everybody has a similar situation like I do, and I didn’t realize that. That’s part of my ignorance was, I didn’t know there were different levels of education in the Northwest Territories. You know, I’m saying, paying off your loan?
Anyhow, I do want to say that the more I look at this that the students who are taking advantage of this through the loan system and go down south, and for whatever reasons they continue to live down south after they finish their education, that’s where we’re seeing this issue here. I’m not too sure if the Minister and his department is continuing to work on that, because he said aggressively seeking policies that would make sure students, to the best of their knowledge, said they’ll come back and work and live in the Northwest Territories. It feels like sometimes that we’re being taken advantage of and our system has some form of a degree of abuse, and that’s not the whole intention of these support systems we have in place for students.
I wanted to just let the Minister know that we need to look at this issue seriously and stronger, the issue that students who come to us with good intentions and they get support, but they do not return, for whatever reasons, and only they know those reasons. However, according to the statement, there is a lot, a high percentage of them coming back and living in the North, so that’s a good sign. We’re seeing a small fragment or segment of our loans, and I certainly, again, support this bill with the request, and I support the students who are taking post-secondary institution training for the betterment of their families. Those are my comments.
