EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Is that the difference that the Income Support distribution for $27 million for Income Support on the business plan is totally including the staff and the distribution of Income Support?
On G-11 of the business plan, the amount of $33,610,000 the member is correct.
That is the total amount of the Income Support line, which is both the administrative side and payments. It’s for headquarters and so on.
The amount on G-14 in the main on the fees and payments, $27,644,000 also is inclusive of the social assistance payments, which would be $26,603,000, Daycare Subsidy Program, which is $655,000 and the Seniors’ Fossil Fuel Subsidy that we have been discussing which is $169,000 and the building careers line for $78,000 for a total of $27,644,000. That’s the amount.
Thank you for clarifying. (interpretation) Thank you.
Chairman: Thank you. G-14.
I think in this area the department’s adding, it looks like approximately 6.7 PYs.
I’m wondering if the minister could tell us what those PYs are and where they are going to be based.
Those are income support worker positions that are transferred.
Originally many of them were the hamlets, until the contract is transferred back to the government so we assume their employ.
I thank the minister for that answer. That’s an interesting answer.
Could the minister tell us which hamlets transferred their income support workers back to the government?
I am just trying to get that information right now.
We have several that have changed; we talked about before the Income Support Program can be very complex.
In 2006-07 there are community contribution agreements for the delivery of Income Support services across Nunavut.
The communities of Kugaaruk, Baker Lake, Hall Beach, Igloolik, and Whale Cove returned their community contracts to the GN effective April 1, 2006.
Can the minister tell us why they returned the income support workers positions back to the government?
Some of the communities felt that delivering the Income Support Program was outside of the scope for their businesses in the hamlet. Some communities felt that the amounts of the return or the administration fees that were being paid did not make it equitable for them to continue doing the Income Support Program.
I would like to ask the minister about the Healthy Children Initiative that is on Page G-11 of the business plan. Can the minister tell me how many communities in Nunavut access funding through that program?
You are moving very fast, you’re not giving me a chance to go through my big binder here.
The number of programs that are being run under the communities, I can’t see it here right now.
If the member would like to ask another question, I will get back and get that answer while he is asking his next questions.
Maybe I should ask five questions while he is working on looking for the first answer.
My next question is related to the healthy children issue, but I’ll move on and come back. The Northern Student Education Initiative on page G-15 of the main estimates, it says, “… to provide support for students from Nunavut who attend post secondary institutions and training programs in the Edmonton area.”
Could the minister tell us how that initiative provides support to students in the Edmonton area?
Under the Kitikmeot region for the Healthy Children’s Initiative, first of all a total is committed of $176,000 for Cambridge Bay, Gjoa Haven, Kugaaruk, Kugluktuk, and Taloyoak.
In the Kivalliq region, Arviat, Baker Lake, Chesterfield Inlet, Coral Harbour, Rankin Inlet, Repulse Bay, and Whale Cove.
In the Qikiqtani, or the Baffin region, Arctic Bay, Cape Dorset, Clyde River, Grise Fiord, Hall Beach, Igloolik, Iqaluit, Kimmirut, Pangnirtung, Pond Inlet, Qikiqtarjuaq, Resolute Bay, and Sanikiluaq.
There were no programs in Qikiqtarjuaq, Resolute Bay, Sanikiluaq or Grise Fiord. There were no programs in Arctic Bay, Whale Cove and the rest of the communities in Nunavut had programs under the Healthy Children’s Initiative.
I was going to ask him to provide the answer to my last question. We can go back to the Healthy Children.
I notice that the funding has decreased by $30,000 for 2007-08. Can the minister tell us why there is a decrease in the funding?
Under the Northern Student Education Initiative, that program was set up, as the member knows, from the GNWT and was grandfathered into Nunavut. That’s where we have the student support person who is available for northern students that may attend programs, or particularly post secondary schooling in Edmonton, specifically.
On the $30,000 that was transferred, that money was transferred from this line item in the budget to another line item in the budget, which is a program that we inherited from CGS.
It did not deflect or take anything away from the program areas that we had available to us under the Healthy Children’s Initiative. So hopefully that helps with the member’s question.
I hope people reading the Hansard tomorrow can follow what’s going on here; back and forth between questions and answers.
When the minister replied earlier, he gave me a list of communities in Nunavut that had applied under Healthy Children’s Initiative. He also mentioned that there were some communities that didn’t receive any funding.
I am wondering if the minister could explain how the department is planning to help those communities that didn’t receive funding in the past, if they can access funding in the next fiscal year.
That’s a proposal-based system so when we receive proposals we look at it and we try to assist, where possible, to help the communities facilitate their application. So it’s proposal-based.
I would suggest to you that we didn’t have a commitment of funds because there was no proposal that was brought forward.
So can the minister clarify for me then: is the program well advertised and promoted throughout Nunavut so that all the communities have an opportunity to develop proposals to submit to your department for consideration?
Hon. Ed. Picco: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This program has continued; it’s a program that has come forward over the last couple of years. It’s administered through our regional Early Childhood Learning offices so I think it’s pretty well known.
In the main estimates under early childhood programs - daycare contributions, there is an amount of $1,595,000 and it looks like an increase of $10,000 over the previous fiscal year.
Could the minister tell me how many daycares in Nunavut or how many childcare centres are supported through the funding in this program.
Mr. Chairman there are 44 licensed childcare facilities operating right now in Nunavut.
Can the minister tell me how many of the 44 licensed childcare centres, how many childcare/daycare seats or positions are available for children, total?
There are almost 1,000 licensed spaces presently in Nunavut.
In Cambridge Bay the facility there hasn’t expanded for many years. I can’t put a time on it.
There is a pressing need for more spaces in my community so the parents can seek employment.
I wonder if the minister is working with colleagues in federal government to access additional funding for Nunavut so that we can make more space available for working parents in Nunavut.
We’ve paid out about $1.2 million from the Early Learning Childhood Trust Fund from the federal government over the last year and a half, which has been a real godsend to many of our daycares.
At the same time, the government has announced that any time we do a major renovation to our schools or build a brand new school we would actually put in new daycare spaces so that we have actually have more childcare spaces available.
At the same time we also provide O&M support and help as well as license daycare facilities.
We don’t build daycares as a government. We are trying to work with our federal government to see what other avenues are available to us. The new federal government has brought in a different program where they subsidize the family as opposed to giving money to a government to actually open up new spaces.
I thank the minister for that information. The minister mentioned that there are 1,000 licensed spaces in Nunavut.
Can the minister give us an idea of how many spaces are actually required in Nunavut?
We haven’t done as a department any type of inventory or stats number to see how many spaces are desired or needed. What we can say is that we have almost a thousand spaces licensed in Nunavut right now and we would suggest that there would be probably you know at least half again, a guess.
It would be a rough number and we don’t have any real numbers to prove that.
Page G-14, G-15.
Mr. Arvaluk: One very quick question Mr. Chairman.
In the business plan G-12, right under the daycare branch contributions, Young Parents Stay Learning for $220,000. It says that is for parents who are under the age of 18. Is that under the present Education Act?
What we are trying to do here is use a new initiative and what it proposes to do is to provide 100 percent subsidy for daycare fees for a young mother who is trying to attend school and help cover her daycare costs.
It’s not under the Education Act it’s in the Income Support Program.
Mr. Curley: I have a very short question to the daycare and I think the information page stated, we’re not just talking about daycare centres, but there are also family centres. Could you explain the difference between these two?
When we talk about a licensed daycare space, in most cases we’re talking about the classic situation, we have an actual daycare, a daycare building where children would attend something like a school. When we talk about a family day home, family care, that’s where a person has licensed space within their home and they are taking care of children in their home.
Could the minister give us, out of the 44 licensed childcare centres, does that include family daycare day homes, and if so could the minister provide a breakdown of these facilities please?
Under the 44 licensed childcare facilities currently operating, 151 spaces are under the aboriginal head start basis. We have 524 full time pre-school spaces, 154 full time infant spaces, 43 part-time pre-school spaces, and 118 after-school spaces.
We are in the process right now with the opening of the new daycare for four infant spaces and 16 pre-schoolers.
Could the minister explain to the committee exactly how the funding formula works with the daycare facilities that probably have heavier operating costs than a family day home and explain to us exactly how family day homes are funded?
Under a licensed space what we try to provide is a subsidy to the operator of that childcare space, or in most cases when we are talking about childcare facility it is a non-profit society and the amount of funding available to that facility is based on the number of kids, the number of spaces, the age of the kids and so on.
When we look at the day home program, because that’s for profit, and in most cases we don’t provide the same subsidy. What we do is license that space so that it’s inspected and licensed so that parents who put the child in a day home for example, they know that the facility or the day home is getting quality care, and is up to standards.
Mr. Curley: So the family day homes are for profit?
I would have thought these were more of a charity types in view of the fact that the family homes I would assume are not necessarily troubled by all the other, the insurance as well, the WCB requirements and so on. How is it determined that the minister or the department would pay for the profit margins of these operating family day homes when in fact they are more likely just a family home.
Hon. Ed. Picco: Just for clarification very quickly, when we talk about family homes, we’re talking about a family who decides to take care of three or four children in their homes during the day, it is a daycare service. They go to the regulatory body, which in this case is the Department of Education; we inspect the home and license it.
Those people who are running the daycare home receives money from me, or from Mr. Curley, or anyone else who has children there.
We don’t subsidize those costs for that person because it is running for profit they would be trying to get a profit from running the day home. That’s different than a childcare space, which is a non-profit society that we’re mostly familiar with.
Mr. Curley: The funding then is based on the numbers of kids that are going in.
Is there a requirement still to comply with the legal requirements of liability requirements of operating a facility, in view of the fact that there needs to be some type of protection for kids, rather than just straight family rules?
That’s why we say when we inspect the family home, which is a home to take care of kids for a fee basis, we inspect that then to make sure that there’s insurance and other codes brought up to snuff, and insurance is there, fire protection, and so on, and so forth.
A parent who puts their child in a licensed facility like that, they are eligible for a subsidy but the owner/operator of that facility does not receive any kind of subsidy from the government.
My next question has to do with that again. The minister did not indicate whether the compliance requirements for liabilities, for instance, insurance for injuries, or what not with the WCB.
Do you require then that they do have that coverage before you grant them any funding? Or is it just sort of your family’s home looks pretty good.
What references are required in order to comply with all these other legal stuff that business related facilities normally go through.
If it’s a licensed day home then all the regulatory requirements have to be met. That includes Workers’ Compensation Board, health and safety, and so on. The owner/operator of the day home would have to have that in place before they could be licensed.
Page G-14, includes G-15.
Total Operations and Maintenance. $38,097,000.
Chairman: Thank you. G-16 includes G-17.
Total Operations and Maintenance. $11,391,000.
In this particular section I think there’s four person years that have been projected for 2007-08.
Can the minister tell us what those four PYs are, and where they will be based?
He’s asking about positions. We have positions in Pangnirtung, Kugluktuk, Baker Lake, Pond Inlet, Arviat, and Iqaluit.
Just for the record, could the minister clarify what those positions are?
That was part of the extra money that we received through the FMB; the $2.96 million that the members had approved. It includes positions for student assessment, as well as money for the education and trades training, as well as looking at the coordinator in bilingual education and secondary programming.
Those are spread out amongst the communities that we had talked about earlier.
So the idea is to put those positions in place to help serve the education system itself.
Page G-16 and G-17.
Total Operations and Maintenance. $11,391,000. (interpretation) Do you agree?
Chairman: Thank you. G-18, which includes G-19.
Total Operations and Maintenance. $108,649,000.
I think I’m on the wrong standing committee if I have to ask all these questions so that I can get the answers. Education is very important in my riding, so I feel I have to ask a few questions here.
The issue came up two years ago and I’ve been banging away on the minister about it. The issue is the semestered versus non-semestered programming in the high school in Cambridge Bay.
I haven’t got a satisfactory answer from the minister about why our high schools switched over from a non-semestered programming to a semestered programming. It affected a good number of our students and they weren’t prepared last summer when they had to write departmental exams. I think it’s still affecting them now and it’s affecting the students that are enrolled in the current school year.
I’m wondering if the minister could tell me why that particular school switched over to non-semestered programming, and whether they’re planning to continue to offer non-semestered programming.
I don’t mind anybody asking questions during debate, but what I would like to see is putting your hand up before I seek an agreement to the budget we’re debating. So go ahead, Mr. Minister.
There’s a huge debate on semestered and non-semestered schools. There are some schools and some districts that really favour them and some others aren’t, and the member said that he hasn’t got a suitable answer.
There are benefits to non-semestered timetables.
It means, and I will just go with some of the examples: there are more achievements and academic retention levels that are higher; there’s more time for the English as a second language for the transition of skills of the first language to the second language, which is important, especially here in Nunavut; students who miss chunks of time for seasonal activities, for example, for sporting events, miss less time of each course, and it makes it easier to catch up when you’re on the non-semestered system; less classroom management issues; students experience greater variety in school and so on.
At the same time the benefits of having a semestered timetable includes something like generally semestered course delivery is more cost effective; teachers, students, and families prefer semesters and they feel less stressed; teachers are responsible for fewer students over the course of a semester, and thus they’re able to have more one-on-one interaction with the students.
There are currently 13 high schools in Nunavut put on the non-semestered system and we have 12 schools in Nunavut who are using the semestered system.
So it’s either one or the other. Some people really like it and some people don’t like it, and so on and so forth.
The reason for the Cambridge Bay move was that there was a discussion between the staff, I believe to the best of my information that they felt that they would move in that direction. They have found that now there is some concern from some parents, not all parents. Some parents actually like the position the school is in right now and some who don’t like the move to semestered versus non-semestered.
He mentioned semestered and non-semestered; there are pros and cons to both. He didn’t mention the cons. He mentioned the pros.
Can he mention the cons to the semestered and to non-semestered programming?
Hon. Ed. Picco: Mr. Chairman, if you just go back and look at what I said on the pros, the opposite would be true for semestered or non-semestered. For example, if a semestered school for example, or a non-semestered school gave more time for English as a second language learners, then of course the semestered school does not because of the way the semester is set up.
So that would be a con.
Students who miss a lot of school, for example, under the semestered system, have a harder time academically because of the way the semester is set up.
Under the non-semestered system, students who miss a lot of school, as an example, for seasonal activities or going to sporting events: Arctic Winter Games, Canada Winter Games and so on would miss less of each course because of the way the semester would be run. So those would be part of the pros and cons.
I have heard that there’s another option, there’s the mixed semestered and non-semestered option where you don’t have all students on non-semester or conversely you don’t have all students on semestered.
The students, and their parents can say, we want to take a mixed, sort of suits their specific lifestyle.
I wonder if the minister could comment is there any merit to that and if so, have they considered that?
There has been some discussion around the mixed semester system.
You only really see that in a smaller school where you would have an opportunity, where teachers would be able to coordinate between students that will be on the semester, students that would be on a non-semester.
It is probably something that we could look at. I talked to the deputy minister and that’s something we are looking at right now, is that a viable option for us?
One of the issues that some parents have with the non-semestered program is that students who attend school an entire year, the way the non-semester program worked, they start school in August and attend school for eight or nine months, and then write their final exams. So, what happens in May or June, you’re writing all your final exams.
If for any reason, personally or otherwise you are unable to write your final exams then you basically fail your course, because you can’t write your final exams. That’s something that concerns me. I am wondering if the minister can tell me how his department would address when a student can’t write the final exams for personal reasons.
Perhaps a young lady is expecting, giving birth, or the student had an accident and is in the hospital, it could be any reason. So I’m wondering if the minister could explain that to me.
Incidents happen in a student’s life, pregnancy and so on, that happens.
It is my understanding that the student can still reapply to write the exam or the tests.
So I don’t see that as being an issue.
I believe it may be possible if you are writing Nunavut exams, but if you’re writing a departmental exam to get into a university, it’s only written at certain times of the year.
You need to write those exams to gain admission to post-secondary institutions so it may not be an option for all students.
I wonder if the minister could tell me or explain to me how students who have to write the departmental exams would be able to write those exams and still get their marks back in time for to submit applications to universities.
Again, there is an opportunity to re-write the departmental exams, a challenge to the exam if you are not able to write it because of illness or injury or something like that. There is a time limit of course but there is that option there.
The daunting thing about writing departmentals when you are on a non-semestered system you may have to write six to seven departmentals in same period of time. Week to week it would happen. That is very arduous and strenuous.
That’s a lot of pressure for the students, unlike the semester system program where your first semester you take three courses and you write three departmentals. Under this non-semestered you may take seven to eight courses where you have to write seven to eight departmentals in a two-week period or less.
It is quite stressful to the students.
I am wondering if the minister can comment if that is fair of the education system in Nunavut to impose that kind of pressure, stress and strain on Nunavut grade 12 students who are trying to study and remember everything they have learned from August of the previous year till June of the year that they are going to write their exam.
As I said earlier, almost half of the schools in Nunavut are on a semestered school system. It’s in the same thing in the south where you have a majority of schools going either way.
The challenges for a Nunavut school to write the departmental exams are no different for the challenges for all the other students and our students who write the departmental exams and they are successful are indicative of that. Again, the exams are staggered to allow the student to be able to study for the exam and so on.
And the success rates show that with the semestered versus the non-semestered system.
I’d like the minister to table some information for me and my colleagues to review that shows the comparison and success rates of semestered versus non-semestered schools graduating grade 12 students who are going on to post secondary school.
In particular, I am referring to university level post secondary institutions in the south that require quite high averages in the 80s and 90s percent range.
I wonder if the minister has that information available if he can table it.
I mean that’s the point.
When you are in university you sit there and you cram for seven exams in a three-week period. You burn the midnight oil studying for 10 to 12 hours. A student that has gone through that in grade 11 or grade 12 writing exams when he gets to university those types of pressures they are used to them because they have already experienced them.
There is an analogy to be made that those students would probably have more opportunity for success. What we can do is to try to make the numbers available to the member.