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.

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. Speaker. I rise too today, along with my colleagues, to discuss Education Week. Obviously, with Education Week we think of our teachers. We had the opportunity to talk to the NWT Teachers’ Association. We are very thankful for those teachers that work in the Northwest Territories. We all know, in our personal lives, teachers that helped us out to get to where we are today.

These teachers are working hard, in the evenings and on some of their own time. We talked recently about some of the sporting events and how some communities do really well in certain sports because of the commitment from some of those teachers.

Recently, over the last year, we’ve had an attack on the teachers and the education, and we see that was the way junior kindergarten was implemented. There was lots of pressure financially on those

teachers and the DEAs to find the money to implement junior kindergarten the way it was rolled out. That’s why we sat here and debated the junior kindergarten so strongly. The fact that they have so many financial pressures now, to add junior kindergarten to that system was not fair. It needed to be implemented in a different process. It needed some funding.

Junior kindergarten is a good idea. We support the concept of junior kindergarten, but not the way it was rolled out. It needs to be implemented by the communities for the communities.

We know there’s a review currently underway of junior kindergarten, and I will have questions for the Minister later on how that review is coming and where the DEAs and those teachers can ask questions on how to implement junior kindergarten for their community. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your committee has been considering Tabled Document 188-17(5), NWT Main Estimates 2015-2016, and would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I understand the Premier is giving me all the history and all the information that’s there.

My question is: Is there a one-page document advertising that we can share with the general public that there will be jobs in Fort Res, Tsiigehtchic in the third, fourth year? Is there a document out there? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I didn’t look for the report and I already indicated in my statement that Hay River is appreciative of the positions we’ve had decentralized. We were looking for the plan, a public document to be presented to the public of the Northwest Territories. Is the government presenting that going forward? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I understand a lot of the information that’s there that the Premier just provided me, but there is no plan out there. There’s no long-term plan that the Cabinet has been sharing. This is information that Cabinet has, Cabinet’s keeping close to their chest. We’re moving these positions, we’ll be moving these positions eventually here, but we don’t know all those plans. The public doesn’t know those plans.

Is there a plan that the government will be presenting to the public?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll follow up from my Member’s statement and I have questions for the Premier of the Northwest Territories about decentralization.

My first question would be: What is the general plan going forward with decentralization? I know we’ve done the first, second and third phase, what is the general plan going forward from… How do we decentralize these positions into the regions? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to talk about decentralization. I’ve spoken of this many times in the House. I know Hay River has had some opportunities to get some of this decentralization, but I’m still a little bit disturbed in the fact that we don’t have a general plan for decentralization. We don’t have a plan of how many jobs are going to get out to the smaller communities, how we’re going to do that.

When we started in this Assembly, it was a priority. We were looking at all the issues that are there, whether it’s housing or office space, or how do we do that staffing. We’ve heard that from HR about staffing in those communities.

We need to continue to work on that. We need to continue to figure out a plan going forward. We’ve had Members concerned about how it’s being implemented. How are those people that are being moved, how are they being told? Are they being told three months away, two months away, or a year ahead? Maybe we should have a better plan to go forward on decentralization. It’s important.

We know the populations are moving to Yellowknife. We just heard a bunch of people from different regions are in Yellowknife. We need to move those people back out to their regions, out to their communities when we get jobs out that way. We need to work on decentralization more. We have to have a bigger plan and figure out how all these departments can work together to figure out a plan to get jobs in all of the small communities and out in the public. Thank you.