With this recent trend of incidents at Stanton or even downtown in some of our offices or anywhere else, for that matter, there’s been a bit of a trend. Has this not stimulated the need for this type of discussion to ensure that our employees are safe, and as such, what about the government taking initiative on doing an assessment to ensure our staff are not only safe but have the proper resources at their beck and call as and when necessary?

Thank you. As we do here in the Assembly, we go through a safety drill. My understanding is that each of the departments through that committee can do safety drills for their own departments or their own floors and offices. I’m not sure how recent or how often these safety drills occur. I can check with the Department of Human Resources who, in turn, will have to check with all of the departments and we can get an update on that. But that would be the process. Thank you.

Again, I appreciate the answer from the Minister, but we’ve got a bit of a trend here where some of our employees, be it at Stanton or at some of the downtown offices, and not only recently but there has been over a number of months in a couple of years that the staff have been in jeopardy or some type of peril because of these types of incidents. Rather than waiting for the occupational health and safety committee to make its recommendation or even to meet for goodness sakes, what proactive approach is the Minister of Human Resources doing and directing through policy to ensure our employees are safe rather than waiting until an incident happens and then figuring, well, maybe we should talk about it? Thank you.

As I indicated, it would be something that does go through the Occupational Health and Safety Committee. However, I can touch base with the deputy. I believe that Human Resources holds responsibility in the safety area of all employees in the public service. I’ll ensure that I hold discussions with the deputy minister, who in turn will discuss with the other deputies to see what type of safety plans are in place for the safety of our staff across the entire public service not only here in Yellowknife but across the whole territory. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the Minister for that because this lack of safety trend is quite alarming and it’s not just about one facility, it’s about all our territorial staff. I’m going to quote Minister Abernethy’s comment the other day, “Our staff are the most valuable resources. They are the backbone of our system and we need to ensure that.” I want to make sure that the Minister is very clear on exactly what he’s going to do and when we’re going to do it, because I don’t want to wait for yet another incident to happen for anyone to be standing by and saying I told you so. We don’t want to be talking like that. We would like to be speaking from a proactive point of view of how we’ve done this, how we’ve approached this and continue to be relentless for the safety of our employees. Seeing news reports that the employees only find out about these particular plans via Hansard is not a right approach. I want us to be as proactive as possible so we’re not talking about this in the future. Thank you.

Thank you. I agree. I will contact the deputy minister of Human Resources as soon as I am able to do so, most likely tomorrow morning. We will have that discussion and she, in turn, will contact the rest of the departments to see what type of safety plans are in place for the safety of our public service. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll have questions for the Minister of Education today following up on my Member’s statement. The questions that I have are about the junior kindergarten review.

Can the Minister indicate where that review currently sits in the review of junior kindergarten? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. We are currently going through the review process. We’ve hired consultants to engage with the general public, the DECs, Aboriginal leadership, Aboriginal Head Start program in the communities, the licenced daycare and family day home operators, and more specifically on how the JK is being delivered in the communities. Also, there was an Arctic Aboriginal Head Start Council. Their programming, Aboriginal governments and the NWTTA is part of the process and the public engagement.

We’re expecting that report and the overall review to be completed by July 2015 and then we will sit down to figure things out from there, how it will look,

and I will be sharing that with the standing committee. Mahsi.

Can the Minister please provide us with the information of who the consultant is? Can we publicly display who that consultant is, how they can be contacted for the public and DEAs to provide their comments sooner than later? Thank you.

Yes. We will provide that to the standing committee, who the actual contractor is. It’s a contractor that’s well known to deal with these matters in other jurisdictions as well. So they’re more specifically on the junior kindergarten area. We also have Dr. Andre Corriveau who’s working very closely with us on this particular file, especially when it comes to the health and social services area. This is a joint initiative between my department, Education, Culture and Employment and Health and Social Services. So we’re doing what we can to capture everything within that review. Mahsi.

As of yesterday the Hay River DEA had not heard from this consultant. The South Slave District Education Authority had meetings just recently and nothing on their minutes indicated that they had a meeting with the consultant.

Can the Minister indicate to me when this consultant will be in the South Slave area or the Hay River area? Thank you.

When we first initiated this discussion, obviously the terms of reference were shared with the standing committee and it’s also on our website. I will be getting back to the Member more specifically when they’re going to be visiting his community, along with other Members’ communities, as well, to gather their information and do the overall review. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister has talked about their website. Will the consultant have a link to their website on how to contact them directly to provide their input through the website and through public process? Thank you.

Mahsi. If the information is not there at this point, we will make sure that it is available. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the Government of the Northwest Territories did a needs assessment in the Sahtu region, the number

one issue with the results of that assessment was the literacy skills of our young students either in school or who have finished school.

What is the Minister doing, what is this department doing to improve the literacy in our small communities in the schools that can show great results by giving some resources to the teachers? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. When it comes to educating our community members, obviously literacy plays a key role at the community level. We work closely with our partners, as well, the NWT Literacy Council. We provide funding on an annual basis and they work very closely with the community. They’re always in the communities promoting literacy, whether it be in schools or at the community level.

We also work with the DECs and DEAs to promote that even further, providing resources, providing funding available to them. So we continue to monitor where we can improve our programming. I’m always open to improving our programming as well. This is an area that I feel we need to invest in continuously. So we’ll continue to do so. Mahsi.

In the Globe and Mail article it talks about the Aboriginal Literacy Pilot Project that dramatically improved the test scores in Ontario. I wonder if the Minister is aware of this First Nations reserve school in Ontario. It was struggling with the basic literacy test scores, and they have done a pilot project in that community that has greatly improved the results of these test scores for the young students.

Is this something that the Minister would be interested to investigate and to see if this could be done in the Northwest Territories in looking at a pilot project in the Sahtu communities?

When it comes to literacy, we’ve made some changes. We’ve had some pilot projects in the South Slave region. We’ve had literacy coaches. It’s been very successful to date and we continue to use that as an example for other schools as well.

The pilot projects we’ve done over the years, so we’ve seen some results out of that. Within our Education Renewal and Innovation, this will obviously capture the literacy component, and we’ll be discussing further with our key stakeholders where we can best invest in certain areas, whether it comes to DECs or DEAs. They are our true partners, so we will continue to work with them.