Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have some opening comments for this department. Much has been said by my honourable friends on the issues surrounding junior kindergarten, inclusive education, Aboriginal Head Start, and many of the more high-profile issues that we have debated in this Chamber. One thing is clear: the focus of the Minister's responsibilities are very much geared toward education, and currently the priority seems to be on pre-kindergarten-to-12 education, and the supports for students after the fact.
We are not taking a hard look at some of the other responsibilities and giving them, I think, proper emphasis, one of those being culture and heritage. There is a new heritage plan, and the Minister provided a briefing on just the other day. I think it is good, but that plan, it is fairly clear that we are only now just starting to think about what culture and heritage mean to our government and developing these resources. I think perhaps we need to rethink where culture sits within the responsibilities of this government and start really emphasizing how we can develop our arts programs, our arts infrastructure, and seeing those as real opportunities to invest in Northerners and, equally, to invest in new opportunities for destination for marketing for tourism.
This department has a very important role to play in supporting tourism and making the North an attractive and vibrant place for people to live and people to visit. There is some work being done, but again, I think we need to bring that part of the portfolio into sharper focus and to have a more concrete emphasis on delivering that.
Post-secondary, as well; I think we are only starting to think about post-secondary, and the longer we take to figure out what we are doing with post-secondary education in the Northwest Territories, the more ground we lose to Yukon College, which has done amazing work. We have a real opportunity to develop our own style of post-secondary here in the Northwest Territories that is distinct and that can fulfill that long-stated goal of a university for the Arctic in Canada. We have fantastic partners in College nordique and Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning, and we have seen a bit of funding increases for both of those organizations, which is welcome, but, again, they are being held back by a lack of focus on where we want to take post-secondary education.
Even now, we are seeing huge cuts and very unpopular cuts to Aurora College that surprise students, faculty, and MLAs. That is a short list, but it clearly shows that people are not ready for this shift so abruptly. That strategic plan, it is not just a piece of bureaucratic work. It is certainly a plan that needs public engagement and investment so the people can get behind it. A lot of people care about Aurora College, and what it represents as an opportunity to Northerners can't be overstated. So we can't be seen as a government that takes opportunities away from Northerners. We have to be seen as a government, and we have to be a government that invests in new opportunities for Northerners, and enhancing the current opportunities for Northerners, as well.
Personally, I can't support nor do I think the government should support drastic program cuts without completing that strategic plan. Furthermore, I think that we really need to think about where we are taking our other post-secondary partners and how we want that playing field to look. Do we want Aurora College to be a polytechnic? It is in labour market development, so it seems to be geared towards job creation, and yet it hasn't very much changed. These are questions we have to ask. Until we see that strategic plan, they are very hard to ask.
I think there are also millions of dollars of research funding, as well, endowments across the country that could be flowing into the NWT if we really capitalize on knowledge economy opportunities. Currently, the ARI, Aurora Research Institute, there is a North Slave office that does not even have technical facilities to work in. All those facilities are in Inuvik, and that position does not have a travel budget to go to Inuvik to work in those facilities, so they have to raise the money through granting, grants and endowments in order to travel to where we have the facility in the first place.
It is things like that that are unrealized opportunities to leverage knowledge and research opportunities to bring more investment and skilled technical people into the Northwest Territories. We had scientists even here for two, three years. It makes a difference. It makes a difference in what they can contribute. The North is a leader in climate change research, probably more so in northern Canada and certainly the world, and we could be applying for a research chair within the ARI and bring basically free investment and more research opportunities here. We are not doing these things. I am not sure if it is because we have not thought to do these things.
I think the very thorough examination of the K-12 and early childhood supports, I think the department is very mindful of those. They clearly have issues rolling those out successfully, but the other components of the department, I think, need a lot of work. This budget does not really address those. There are, of course, the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning to fully offset the costs of junior kindergarten, and there is some dispute on whether or not that is actually occurring, and, of course, enhancing the small community employment support program by an additional $2 million to a total of $5 million.
These recommendations continue to be held by the honourable Members of the standing committee, and we will continue to pursue those, as we believe these are crucial investments that will support the long-term health and success of our people and ultimately reduce the cost of supporting people who do not have jobs and do not have those opportunities that they are so desperate for. We will continue to support those. We will continue to discuss these issues as we go into this business plan, and I look forward to more thorough discussion with the Minister and his staff about what we can do to support culture and post-secondary in particular. Thank you, Mr. Chair.