Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'm going to raise a number of the same concerns that my colleague from Yellowknife Centre has already expressed. We did have a good briefing at noon today from the Minister of Education and his colleague the Minister of Health and Social Services on the youth mental health support investments. It will require transitioning some of the money that's now given to the district education authorities to support that work, and there is additional money that's coming in, and I think that's all a good effort, but there is still a number of outstanding issues with regard to qualifications of the 49 new staff that are to be hired over four years and whether, indeed, we can actually find them, the availability of those sorts of qualified individuals. There are also, I think, some issues around who they report to and what kind of accountability there is between the two departments and locally.

Communities will want to be able to express some views about whether those individuals would be best situated in the schools versus the health centre, and so on. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that they are prepared to look at the concept of a memorandum of understanding between the departments and the different regions to ensure that the money stays within those purposes and to help clarify relationships and so on. I think that's a good move, and I appreciate the commitment of the two Ministers to work together on that. There is to be a communications plan developed, and I think it will be important that that be shared with the standing committee, and that there be regular updates as this starts to roll out. Some more questions about this, but I think it's headed in the right direction, and I appreciate the work of the two Ministers on it.

There is to be a $200,000 reduction in school administration funding in this budget, and I guess it's being driven by a shared services concept. I really think this is more clearly linked to Cabinet's fiscal reduction strategy than good governance, but I'll hold my breath until we see the study on shared services. I understand that is available, and I would urge the Minister to share that with Regular MLAs now, not wait. If that study is finished, share it with us now so we can have a better understanding of whether these savings are really real or imaginary, and whether there is support from the district education authorities for those.

One area that I am concerned about that is presented in the departmental business plan is this notion of having four or five different streams for secondary school graduates, and I don't really understand it very well, and I think there needs to be a lot of public discussion around that. I wanted to encourage the Minister and his department to develop a better communications strategy and approach on this. I think we want to avoid some of the confusion and division that accompanied the STIP initiative, and this is really going to require a lot of proactive work on the part of the department. We want to make sure that our students are fully qualified to get into post-secondary education in other jurisdictions. This needs to be approached very cautiously and carefully.

On the junior kindergarten implementation, the Minister promised full funding, and it's still not there. It looks like there is going to be an increase in inclusive schooling funding, which is a good thing, and it looks like the Minister is prepared to consider some increases for Indigenous language and culture programming, but as my colleague said, what really needs to be changed is the formulas to make sure that junior kindergarten students are actually counted in those formulas for those types of school funding. The Minister himself tabled in the House last year a document that shows that, indeed, if the junior kindergarten students are actually included, it would be about $1.8 million extra going to the district education authorities for those school formula. If it is to be fully funded, the Minister needs to come up with that money and the Minister needs to come up with that money and change those formulas on a permanent basis.

I have some concerns about the status of the social work and teacher education programs, and the fact that it doesn't appear that there's going to be an intake of students coming up in the fall of 2018. If there is no student intake for two years, what are the teachers going to be doing? Sitting around waiting? I just can't see Aurora College waiting themselves, having teachers doing nothing. That needs to be sorted out very quickly, and if there are changes that need to be made to those programs, change the programs. You don't cut them.

I am concerned about the outcome of the foundational review. I did speak to the consultants myself. I am worried that the department is going to turn the foundational review into a way to implement the Skills 4 Success work that the department has under way. That's not what the foundational review should point towards, in my humble opinion. It needs to figure out what the position is of Aurora College with regard to post-secondary education in the Northwest Territories. How is Aurora College going to fit into post-secondary education? That's what that foundational review needs to assist us with.

The minimum wage was increased, or will be increased shortly. In my humble opinion, it's not enough. Come the fall, people in Alberta will be paid more for minimum wage than our workers here in the Northwest Territories, and we have to find a way to make sure that our workers are paid fairly. There are other ways to do this, including increasing the basic income exemptions and territorial tax incentives, and so on; looking at the concept of a living wage, as well. I'm going to be encouraging the Minister to consider additional ways to ensure that our citizens are properly recompensed for the work that they have to do.

I do want to point out that there is no increase in arts support in the ECE budget in 2018-2019. We've heard a lot about that in the last while with the review of Bill 1, and there's a petition that's going to be tabled in this House as well on this issue. If we're serious about economic diversification, we have to find more funding to support the arts. Structural changes, I said in the House last week, bring those efforts together under one roof with the Arts Council.

On early childhood and daycare, there is this agreement now with the federal government. I want to find out what's in that agreement, and whether, as my colleague said, it's really going to support affordability of childcare as well. Unfortunately, in our mandate, we've now moved away from universal childcare to something much more vague, and I'm not sure where we're really going with this.

The last thing, on a positive note, I want to say to the Minister and his staff that I've had very good reports about the staff working collaboratively with Ecole Alain St-Cyr on the expansion of the school. I know that's not really an O and M measure, but I do want to end on a positive note and say that I've heard very good things about the work that's going forward on the school expansion. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.