Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think communication is an issue that we need to work on, but it also needs to be addressed through partnerships with our education authorities working with our board chairs to ensure that this message gets out to teachers. I did attend some of the public hearings as well as constituency meetings where we had parents who were just getting this information presented to them. However, I know some of our education authorities did reach out as well, including us, and we did try to get the communication on the radio and in the newspapers, get it out as much as we can to get feedback from parents and other stakeholders, but I do appreciate the Member's comments, from all three Members who have made comments so far. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Next, we have Mr. O'Reilly.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First off, I want to thank the Standing Committee on Social Development for their exceptional work on Bill 16. I had the privilege of sitting in on many of their meetings. I also want to thank all of the people who participated in that review. My remarks, I am going to focus on a little bit on STIP, and then I will have some remarks about junior kindergarten towards the end, as well. On the surface, this bill looks like it is small changes, but it has proven to be very challenging to get clear responses and information from the Minister and his department. This uncertainty has often given the appearance of setting teachers' interests against those of parents and created tremendous confusion. I have probably received more e-mails and calls on this bill compared to any of other matters during my term as an MLA.

A few key points I want to make about STIP: a huge amount of collaboration work went into the education renewal initiative as the way to transform our educational system to better meet the changing needs of our students while recognizing the critical role of teachers and their wellness, but changes in instructional hours was not a recommendation coming out of the education renewal initiative. I fully recognize the key role played by teachers as we raised two children here, in Yellowknife, and very much value the commitment of teachers here and across the Northwest Territories. Changes in instructional hours came out of the collective bargaining process as a means to relieve the pressure felt by overworked teachers and to ensure that they are treated fairly compared to other jurisdictions in Canada.

While I believe in and support collective bargaining, Regular MLAs had no idea as to what mandate was provided to GNWT negotiators assigned to the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association contract. This negotiating mandate was clearly driven by Cabinet's fiscal strategy and their desire to set a pattern for future negotiations with the Union of Northern Workers. The NWTTA president went on the public record saying that there was no offer in terms of salary increases, so something else had to be done to get an agreement that teachers would accept. Once again, Cabinet's fiscal strategy was the driving force behind those negotiations, a strategy that has been rejected numerous times by Regular MLAs.

So what are the lessons we can learn from this? Number one, Regular MLAs have to pay much closer attention to what Cabinet is negotiating. I am not asking to be at the negotiating table, but Cabinet needs to share its approach and seek input from the Regular MLAs. That has yet to happen. I have asked for a briefing on the UNW negotiations. The Finance Minister made a commitment to do that during our winter review of the 2017-2018 budget, but it still has not taken place. Number two, as a government, we need to invest a lot more into education to improve student outcomes and teacher wellness by hiring more teachers and other measures. Children should be amongst our highest priorities and, yes, even higher than building roads to resources. Three, ECE needs to get back to the education renewal initiative as the real path to educational changes. The train wrecks of junior kindergarten implementation and STIP resulted from very poor and often contradictory communications from ECE and a lack of leadership. Junior kindergarten and STIP have diverted an enormous amount capacity away from the changes that everyone had agreed to make in the education renewal initiative.

To be clear, I believe our teachers are overworked and should be treated fairly. One option is a reduction in instructional hours, but another solution could be to hire more teachers and classroom assistants and other changes. Unfortunately, the bill does not address other options and has not provided an opportunity to fully explore all these options. I want to turn quickly to the junior kindergarten portion of the bill. Everyone would agree, in an ideal world, that junior kindergarten is inherently a good thing, but the implementation has been fraught with poor communications and shifting responses. Junior kindergarten implementation has consumed an inordinate amount of political time and capital. It is beyond me how a policy analysis could have gone forward without considering financial impacts on busing, inclusive schooling, Aboriginal programming and other costs, or the impact on childcare space providers. No matter what the Minister has said, it is clearly not fully funded when it comes to inclusive schooling, Aboriginal programming, and busing.

Yesterday, we received the formula that ECE uses for funding schools, and we now have that information, finally, but it is not where it should be. I will continue to push the Minister very hard on these matters until there are clear and unequivocal commitments to fully fund these aspects of junior kindergarten implementation. I recognize that some of the words I have said are pretty harsh, but, I am sorry, I am going to call it the way it is. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Next, Mr. Vanthuyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, like speakers previous, I want to commend the Standing Committee on Social Development for their extensive work on this bill and thank them for taking this legislation on the road to seek very important input from the public. I also want to acknowledge the many residents of Yellowknife North, in particular parents, that took the time to share their views and opinions with me over the past couple of months. I also want to thank the many teachers, many of them from Yellowknife North, who wrote to me sharing their work experience and perspective on Bill 16. I would be remiss if I didn't thank the Minister and his staff for attending my recent Yellowknife North constituency meeting, as well as representatives from the NWT Teachers' Association for coming and sharing valuable information so constituents could be better informed on this matter. Lastly, I want to thank Yellowknife school districts and their boards for their valuable insight, as well.

Mr. Chair, one of the most important jobs we have as a government is the education of our youth. Our education system is where we place our trust to raise healthy, well-adjusted, capable children, ready to take on the world and become integral contributors to society. It is a sacred duty we have to the children and families of the Northwest Territories and, indeed, our future. As an advocate for education, I am also a staunch supporter of teachers, and therefore I am strongly in support of the Strengthening Teacher Instructional Practices, or STIP, program. We have bestowed a great many responsibilities on our teachers over the years, and we have high expectations of them, and those responsibilities and expectations never cease. In fact, they continually grow.

While the STIP program does reduce the minimum required classroom hours, this does not mean teachers would get more time away from work. Instead, STIP refocuses teachers' hours and school resources to provide enhanced support for teachers and more dedicated time for non-instructional responsibilities. Under the STIP program, they will have more time for planning, strengthening and improving their skills, and professional collaboration and development. They will be able to form and participate in professional learning communities to build on experience and shared knowledge. Emphasizing these things will result in better quality education for our kids. Teachers will be at less risk of high stress, unmanageable workloads, and burnout. As has been said many times in this discussion, teachers who carry an unreasonable workload and can't manage a healthy work-life balance won't be good resources for our kids in the long term.

We know teacher absenteeism and high turnover have been a major concern over the years. I believe we must remain committed to education renewal, in which we have clearly stated that the teacher-student relationship will be positive and healthy while maintaining a safe learning environment. Mr. Chair, as a child, I was challenged with a learning disability, dyslexia. I believe that, as a youth facing this challenge, my time with teachers was better served through quality time and not necessarily a large quantity of time. I would emphasize in this context that Bill 16 permits a reduction in the minimum hours of classroom time, but teachers, administration, and boards will have the discretion to exceed that minimum to provide students with the support they deem necessary.

As has been articulated by many, we must support our teachers, and I believe that to be true if we want to see results. Teachers have the most profound influence on the educational success enjoyed by children. I want to state clearly that I am committed not only to the betterment of education but also to the ongoing development, skill, and proficiency of teachers. By supporting our teachers, we will ultimately be offering the most support and benefit to the ongoing success and wellbeing of our children. We should emphasize, as the Minister noted in his comments earlier, that the Minister has made a commitment to provide a monitoring, evaluation, and accountability plan to the Standing Committee on Social Development before the end of this school year.

The other important element of Bill 16 is the introduction of junior kindergarten. The government has committed to fully funding junior kindergarten, and this is a positive step forward. The Minister's commitment to maintain a pupil-to-teacher ratio of 12 to 1 or better is also significant. These achievements are to be commended. However, to be clear, Members have wrestled with the question of what "full funding" truly means. The department has acknowledged that its funding formulas determine the allocations, but not those allocations adequately. To implement junior kindergarten, funding for inclusive schooling will need to be stretched over an additional grade. The Standing Committee's report indicates that territorial board chairs have already flagged funding as inadequate and in continued decline. These chairs called for funding to be restored to 2012 levels.

We also need to make sure that the transportation requirements of JK are adequately funded. The Minister has made the commitment to monitor the transportation costs and seek additional funding if necessary. I think it's important that we commit full funding to all aspects of JK. To that end, if necessary, I will be seeking to confirm adequate funding in the forthcoming 2017-2018 budget deliberations. In conclusion, Mr. Chair, the education of our young people is a crucial and sacred job. Central to our goal of creating a stable, healthy, and prosperous future for all our citizens, support for our teachers in whom we placed our trust for that mission is an essential part of achieving that goal. Just lastly, Mr. Chair, before final support, I look forward to considering my colleague's amendments and those are my general comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Next I have Mr. Nakimayak.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I won't take up too much time. I know there's a lot of questions and I won't reiterate what my colleagues are saying. Just coming from my region of Nunakput, I know teachers are overworked and like other Members here have had tons of e-mails from teachers, from principals, and from education boards. I believe that students need a good comfortable place to go to school and a chance to learn. In my home town of Paulatuk, we've gone through a couple of principals and teacher burnout is an example of, also a sign of whether a child wants to go to school or not.

I know when I was younger, I looked forward to go to school every day. That was the quality of the teachers that we had and the dedication that they put into it. Back then, they weren't as overworked as they are now. I'm just going to keep it short. I support the amendments to this bill. I support the wishes of some teachers across the territory who want to make this difference. I believe that teacher burnout will eventually someday affect the attendance of some students. I'm just going to say that I support this. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Nakimayak. Next, Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, as part of the Standing Committee on Social Development that was tasked with doing the review and seeking a public process and consultations on the two key amendments that were being proposed, first, of course was JK and the other one was on the instructional hours, I know the report has been done. I thank my colleagues in the House for bringing that report, and I understand we're going to keep talking; more likely the substance of the report later on, but for the most part, what was troubling for me was to hear parents, the quote right off the bat was just, I'm just looking at my notes fairly quickly. One parent made the comment that it was disheartening to learn of the, just perhaps some of the bungling, if I could use that term, in terms of communicating the agreement between the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association and the department in terms of instructional hours. That stood out in my mind in terms of some of the speakers. Of course, these are parents that have the best interests of their children in mind. At the same time, you know, the other comments to say that, well, the status quo is not workable but they need to make some changes. It was a balancing act to try to listen to all the concerns that we have to field throughout the communities that we had visited.

Coming from a small community, it's good that we have large regions and a city like Yellowknife, where you have an abundance of teachers and some very successful rates, successful achievement rates, that we can be all proud of, but, in smaller communities, it's very challenging. In some respects, we lag behind in terms of academic achievements in terms of how our students are doing in the smaller communities and then to consider the idea of reducing this task from instructional hours. That's hard to take. Frame that in as perhaps the concern and hearing the other concerns that were made. It was almost a balancing act that the committee had, but of course, the most prominent was trying to work with and negotiate an agreement between, of course, the department and the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association and bringing that forth to the parents and to the community and in one respect, the teacher support obviously. The parents were very concerned in terms of how it is that they have to maybe fill in the time that, you know, the need to schedule in in terms of their daily lives and how the needs of their children's well-being is going to be met. It was very challenging, but for the most part what I heard was funding has to be a full commitment from this department, especially for JK. At the same time, we need to seriously mark and flag the idea that we need more teachers and more resources for schools. That, for me, was what stood out very clear. We need to make it a priority as we close off the chapter on this and moving forward. I look forward to the other debates and discussions that might follow from my colleagues for that. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Next, I have Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few remarks here. As my colleague said with the social committee, we were pretty much tasked with consulting with the communities here. It's a very difficult position we were put in. Many of the students weren't aware of everything that was being proposed. I think that's one important part to emphasize on because the parent should have known about this before it was even agreed to. I feel – I know we do have to do things a little differently. Many of our students are somewhere between two years behind grade level in some of our communities and it's a huge, huge concern of the parents especially up in the North. I know the department has done their research and the research does say that in the long term that this will benefit the students. I'm sure everyone will be keeping a close eye on this. It is a pilot project, a three-year pilot project, that we will be keeping a close eye on. I know it's most likely a longer term that we'll see the outcomes of this, but those are some of the concerns brought forward.

Also, a number of concerns are students in high school, especially with reduced hours once they graduate may not be ready to move on to post-secondary, and I'm hoping the department could assure us that that won't affect our grade 12 students moving forward. Also, the department did make some changes to JK, junior kindergarten. In the last year, it was working well. It was optional to the communities to offer junior kindergarten. Some of us MLAs here have Aboriginal Head Start programs that were successful for over 20 years in our communities. Now they're competing with junior kindergarten.

It is a very difficult position that they are being put in, themselves, having to scale back, whether it is staffing. Also, the funding that they receive is based on the attendance that they have, which has gone down because some students are attending junior kindergarten, whether it is in the morning or afternoon. That was also brought up. What we are told is junior kindergarten is now competing with Aboriginal Head Start, and for sure, junior kindergarten is going to win. Those are all brought to our attention, and I know the schools have been trained to work with the Aboriginal Head Start programs, whether it is junior kindergarten in the afternoons and Head Start in the morning, and that was working well. I am hoping in the future here that these programs could work jointly, but the bottom line is whatever decision we make today, we are going to get some backlash. The bottom line, I guess, is we do need to support our teachers. I am hoping in the long run that this reduction of up to 100 hours now, it has not been clear what every school has decided to do. I know some are around 45 hours. Some are at 60 or 80, but if schools are not going above 80, it should have been up to 80 hours. Maybe it could have been a little better sell.

Moving forward, I guess, I will be supporting our teachers on this one, and I know the department has told us that every year this will be reviewed, so if things are not working out, I know we could go back to what it was before. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Mr. McNeely.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, would like to thank the committee for their efforts on this controversial challenging issue. Like my colleague from the Delta, coming from a small community, it can be challenging as it is in any profession, and I feel that teaching is a noble one. We had, in one of the communities back home, 100 per cent turnover of the teachers. That is an indicator. A school is no good without any staff within.

We are faced with a number of other obstacles to attract high quality teachers in these smaller communities, and the indicators are there to say there is some trouble here. We have got minimal graduation rates, lower than national averages. Those are indicators that something is not working, which results into a joint effort and a joint challenge by the parent community and the teachers. The teachers need time to prepare. Not only do they prepare for the classroom chores, but beyond and outside the regular hours, we have teachers in probably every community that set aside their own time to try and gather the youth into the area of sports. In the community of Fort Good Hope, we have got an excellent team of young boys there that have won territorial level games here in Yellowknife. I witnessed that over the last couple of years here, and I am quite proud of those fellows there, but equally said, recognition should be given to the teacher also in having to work outside the classroom to encourage and provide activities there for the youth and keeping them off the streets.

For all those reasons, and in the classroom as well, we have a number of cases here that there are multiple class grades within the same room. Preparing our high school students to enter in post-secondary is another challenge there, because it is not the grade examination. It is the same examination as our neighbouring provinces, but we ask ourselves, well, why? I guess one of the reasons why is that the quality of delivery is really not there, because it is faced with numerous remote, isolated challenges, and not all stakeholders are on site and facing those challenges at the community level. Those are my short comments, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McNeely. All Members from that side of the House had a chance to comment. I see no further general comments. We will proceed to a clause-by-clause review of the bill, deferring the bill number and title until after consideration of the clauses. Please turn to page 1 of the bill. I will call out each clause. If you agree, please respond with an "agreed." Clause 1.

Clause 2.

Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Just so I am clear on the process here, are we allowed to ask questions about the subject matter of these clauses? Is this the appropriate time? I see the clerk shaking their head. Okay.

This is the part of the bill that deals with junior kindergarten. Late yesterday, the Minister sent this document to the Standing Committee on Social Development, which I have got a copy of as well. It is the 2017-2018 school funding framework. In this, there are sort of different formulas for different aspects of school funding. There is administration, inclusive schooling, Aboriginal programming. There is a number of them in here. Some of these formulas start with kindergarten. Some of them have been changed to include junior kindergarten. Can the Minister provide some rationale as to why some formulas include junior kindergarten and why some were left at kindergarten? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do our fund our schools at over $155 million in the 2017-2018 school year. One in particular such is inclusive schooling, which is $26.5 million. Some of these funding formulas we are actually funding over the above legislated values, and as he mentioned with the formula funding, he has recognized that some of them include junior kindergarten; however, some do include kindergarten. We are looking at reviewing some of these funding formulas, and appreciate that the Member has brought that to our attention. We would just let the Member know that we are looking at some of the reviews of the formula funding.

Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. In the last week and a half, I have met with the Yellowknife Catholic schools, the Yellowknife District No. 1 board and CSFTNO, all of the Yellowknife boards, and each one of them has raised this issue with me about how JK is not fully funded. We have got the evidence now. The Minister says that they are looking at changing some of these formulas. When is that going to happen, and will it happen in time for the 2017-2018 school year? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister Moses.