Marsi cho, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I want to speak on the items that appear to be most important to the communities that I represent. I have had many discussions over the years with various groups about all departments, and these are the items that were very specific to education.
The Indigenous language broadcasting, it is not an item here that I have an issue with the budget on. They have over a million dollars in Indigenous language broadcasting. It is the way in which more of the broadcasting can be spread throughout the NWT and how money could do a lot to support the communities where they need to have some language broadcasting.
I think CBC does a pretty good job of broadcasting Aboriginal languages, but there is another radio station, Native Communication Society, the CKLB. They often are not able to get their broadcasts out to the communities. In fact, looking at one of my communities, Lutselk'e, they do not have any radio at all. They do not have CBC, and they do not have any CKLB.
That is something that I think we talked about a bit when we had the Committee on the Sustainability of Rural and Remote Communities. We speak about that and how we are able to maybe train local individuals, which, again, would be a job in the small communities for somebody to take care of the technical aspects of what needs to occur in the communities to ensure that the broadcasting is continuing.
I don't know if this department would be solely responsible for it, but I think they would certainly have their hand in it as well, and I think that is something that I would like the department to start working on to try to assist the broadcasters or the radio stations in order to broadcast to all the communities in the territories.
Like most people, I do have an issue with the fact that there is no enrolment of students for the two programs. I felt at one time that maybe the TEP program, the Teacher Education Program, was sort of like the flagship program for Aurora College. I know that Aurora College now has a very good nursing program. I think that's going well. They're producing a lot of nurses. My understanding is they're not producing as many teachers. I'm thinking that instead of withdrawing from the program, that maybe they should try to improve the program if they have issues, that students are graduating from there and are not able to go right into a classroom to teach, then maybe what they should do is to make sure that the education is there for them; their own education, the teacher's education, so that they can go into a classroom and teach.
It's the same thing with the social workers. I know that some of the social workers, once they've gone through the program, don't have all of the requirements to be a social worker in the different fields, and so on. If that's the case, then I think the college should do something about making sure that the social workers have the education in order to do the job for us in the territories. I think that the value of local social workers is really underestimated by our government. I think that, when you look at social workers when it comes to Child and Family Services and other areas where the social workers interact with the community members, you would find that the social workers, the local social workers, are highly successful. I know many, many social workers, many of whom are retired after a long career, and from my community, my home town, ladies that I knew when I was a kid, who are retired social workers who have a very good reputation. I think if need be, maybe reach back to some of those social workers to try to improve the program, as opposed to discontinuing enrolment.
Just touching on a couple of other things that I think would be a big help to the small communities, and that is things like trying to run a breakfast program. For most communities where you have money, where people have money, and where the people are wondering even if they have food in the fridges, well, in our small communities, there are families that don't have food. It seems like it's a basic need, but they don't have food. Some of those kids will get up to go to school so they could have something to eat, and it's a pretty sad state of affairs when we have kids that don't have food, and that they're going to be not attending school because the parents are unemployed, or the parents are not employed, after trying to get the kid off to school day after day after day after year after year after year. It becomes something that we need to change, that we need to put the parents to work.
Some of the Members spoke of the small community employment program to be used for that. We get a hold of it. It appears as though the department's got a hold of it, and wants to turn it into a skills development thing. We put that program in place because of employment rates. The employment rates were so bad in the small communities that we needed to have people go to work, so that people could go to work. They could send their kids to school, so they don't have the situation in the future. Like 10 years from now, if people are working and the kids are going to school, we're going to have graduates. We're going to have people in, the students are graduating; that increases their ability or their possibility of getting a job. Even just grade 12 increases their possibility of getting a job by probably close to 30 per cent compared to somebody who doesn't have a high school education. I mean, that's quite a jump. If they were lucky enough or fortunate enough to end up in a post-secondary like trades, or university or college, then their possibilities of getting a job could jump by another 15, 20 per cent.
So I think this department has to be able to get people to work, hire people. There are a lot of projects on the go. I know that in my hometown right now, there are a whole bunch of people cutting trails as part of the community access road from the Department of Infrastructure and the assistance of the small community employment program combined together. It's put about eight or nine people to work. Those eight or nine people are going to be able to have not just an income but have ability, if they can't find other work, even to draw employment insurance.
I think those are the things I want to talk about. There's something that I think is old and way past due, but at one point, we used to have truancy officers. I talked about that in the House before, and I think that the department should look at something like that, or talk to DAs or something like that. It doesn't have to be specifically that, but developing a strategy to get the kids to go to school.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.