EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
If the person is accepted into the college program in Rankin Inlet, then they are informed right away if there’s availability or not availability of family housing, and in those cases, then there isn’t a family unit available if the spouse comes to visit, but the student is told at the outset.
So we know it’s not a very good situation to be in because if you are student, your spouse comes to visit, you should be able to be accommodated with her.
That only make sense, and that’s something that we are moving towards, but again, we have to find the capital dollars to move that forward.
Can you commit to this House, there’s some people like Ilagiituut and there’s some individuals in Rankin Inlet that lease houses for the immediate solution before you proceed with the building residents for Arctic College?
Do you not have a program to approach the people that I just mentioned for a short-term solution?
That’s something we could look at.
Again, the dollar values that have been available for leasing has been tight within that framework of the college that we have talked about already and it came up again in the external review.
I have asked the college to come forward with a debts reduction plan to make up some of that difference and to go back onto the open market and to look at cost money on capital leases.
In the short-term, it’s a good solution, in the long-term, it’s a large drain on the monetary resources of the college.
So I have asked Mr. Clendenning again to review what is available in the community and how we could budget for it to follow up on the member’s suggestion.
So we will make that commitment.
Thank you, minister for the comment.
Going back to the environmental technology program, you mentioned that the land portion is to help the student how to hunt.
I have heard it from more than one student.
How can they learn how to hunt without the rifle, without being allowed to carry a rifle and just the instructions being allowed to be with a rifle?
It’s my understanding from what Mr. Clendenning was saying was that the students on that type of program, when they are in the winter camp, as an example, there are rifles, there are guns available, not only for protection, but in some cases, they’re able to get game, which they share when they are at the camp, and that was what my understanding is from what Mr. Clendenning has said.
Again when they are out there, as the member has said, there are dangers, for example, with polar bears coming into the camp, and so on.
I will ask Mr. Clendenning just to follow up on that because he is more familiar with the program than myself?
Mr. Clendenning: That is correct.
The main purpose is for the students to learn survival skills out on the land, but they do have guns with them for protection.
They do sometimes take an opportunity to do some hunting so that they can get some traditional food for the camp, for the students and the staff.
Perhaps if you can maybe send some students aside without the, not to degrade the instructors at all, or anything, but just to put them aside and ask them what does go on out there, because this is conflicting to what Mr. Clendenning is saying and to what the students are saying.
I would really appreciate report on that issue.
That is my last question.
I would be happy to do that and prepare a report back to the minister which he could share with the House.
Chairman (Netser): Thank you.
I know and I am sure that the minister is anticipating some questions on the Executive Summary Report that he tabled.
In there it indicates and we approved it, in the last supplementary, the $1.3 million bridge financing for the College, was supposed to enable the College to put itself in the position to re-position itself and develop a plan for re-structuring, programming, and improve accountability and provide a time to implement the recommendations that are in the report.
I think one of the other things it was meant to do is to allow them to be able to have a balanced budget for that year.
I am just wondering first off, if that indeed is the case, will the budget be balanced for that fiscal year?
There were several recommendations within the report which dealt with the financial and administrative aspects of Nunavut Arctic College.
As I have said in the House, when I became minister in March, one of my key priorities was to try to re-balance the budget to get it back on line from the cut that it had taken previously.
The Financial Management Board and ourselves have worked towards that goal and we were able to find the $1.3 million dollars.
The College has undertaken a debt reduction plan which was introduced with the College’s Board of Governors.
I can ask Mr. Clendenning maybe with some detail on the exercises around the $1.3 million and the balanced budget question.
The infusion of the $1.3 million went a long way to helping us stabilize our funding situation in the College.
We were able to present a balanced budget to the Board in December, which was approved.
The majority of the $1.3 million that has been provided will go directly towards the deficit, to reduce the deficit.
We have also developed a deficit reduction plan, which I presented to the minister in early January also to the Board at our meeting in December and again at our meeting in February.
Our goal in terms of moving forward with the deficit reduction plan is to be able to eliminate the deficit by June of 2006; in a way that we don’t put any additional burdens on our students and that we don’t see any significant reduction in our programs and services within the College.
We feel that we have the plan that will allow us to do that and we’re working very closely with the Board and the Minister to ensure that happens.
In the report here it also indicates that the repositioning efforts should focus on strengthening the Senior Management Team in developing a plan to restructure programming and improve accountability, and so on.
I’m just wondering if I can get an idea or an explanation from either the Minister or the President on what they’ve done to strengthen their Senior Management Team.
What have they done for restructuring or what are they looking at doing for restructuring of programming and improving accountability as well?
The College has moved very quickly to have someone in place called the Chief Financial Officer or for the College’s purposes, a bursar.
That bursar position has been filled and in deed many of the recommendations that were found on the financial side are being addressed and have been addressed by the bursar or the Chief Financial Officer for the College.
One of the issue around the College has also been it’s fiscal year but that’s because of the way the college is structured and the school attendance and enrollment.
That was one of the observations made by some of the staff in context with the way budgets had been rolled out by the College in the past.
As the Minister has indicated, the only thing they have done to strengthen their Senior Management Team is hire a bursar.
The report has only come out in November.
There have been some senior management changes as we talked about earlier that have occurred in the College.
We have a new director for example at the Nunatta Campus, a long time northern educator.
So we’re very pleased with that.
We’ve got one from Cambridge Bay also.
So there have been some changes in the senior management of the College.
We have put the chief, a person who has an accounting designation as the chief bursar within the College framework.
So, there has been some administrative as well as some technical changes to the College.
Again, as we said earlier, the recommendations are being followed and updated as we move through this process.
Mr. Chairman, as the Minister had indicated, they have a new director here at Nunatta Campus.
What happened to the old Director?
There has been a transition in the position here.
The position came open.
We had an open competition.
I am very pleased to say Ms. Peesee Pitseolak who has done numerous work with the Department of Education, a long time educator is now the Director of the Nunatta Campus, an Inuk.
Nunatta Campus as the members know is the largest campus within the College family and we’re very pleased to have Peesee on board.
Chairman: Go ahead Mr. Tootoo.
I’m sure, but I still would like to ask what happened to the old Director in the transition there.
The previous director in the campus, as some of the members know, his wife was the lead instructor for the Nursing Program has left that position.
The director for the Nunatta Campus in Iqaluit would be of course like anyone else, moving with his wife.
So, he finished his position in the College at the campus to allow for the transition of Ms. Pitseolak, which has occurred and now the gentleman in question, and I don’t want to get into some of the human resources specifics but is now working with the College on different files and I believe he’s finished his position in June of this year.
At the same time, part of the work that he is doing has come up in the House earlier.
He is with an outside agency and part of his salary costs are also covered by that contract.
So, I don’t want to get into some of those types of confidential issues on how people are paid and remunerated, and so on and so forth, but the position has been filled.
The transition has occurred as has been asked for within the documents that we just talked about to address some of those needs.
I will just ask what happened.
I have been asking about any of the details that the minister was referring to.
It was quite interesting that he would come out with that.
One of the other things that I read there says developing a plan to restructure programming.
Can I just get an explanation from the Minister, what were some of the problems that were identified in that way that programming structure is now that would require something like that to be put in there, to develop a plan to restructure programming.
This is one of the issues that has been raised in different aspects throughout the report.
We are structuring the program, it takes on two phases.
One, is being the academic part of the programs that are in place to prepare, again our graduates of the college.
Something in the line of what we see in the Nunavut Teachers Education Program, the nursing program, the law program that they are graduating with a degree.
At the same time restructuring different types of programs within that context and offer other types of programs, which are more beneficial to the students.
So, for example, reviewing should be continued with a management studies program, should we be introducing an I/T program.
So that is what was meant by the restructuring of the program when you get into the report itself.
Chairman: Go ahead, Tootoo.
I guess we would have no way of knowing that unless he is planning on tabling our reports so that we can have a look at it.
Indicating that it is the only way we have to know when to ask the questions.
That leads to my question specifically.
How do they know that they have a nursing program, the teaching program, and the environmental technology program?
How does the college determine what courses that it is going to offer?
How do they determine that?
Chairman: go ahead, Mr. Minister.
There are a variety of ways of looking at how programs developed within the college system. Some are requests to the college.
A good example is the nursing program.
That was requested by the Government of Nunavut to the college to develop, implement and run a program similar to what happened with the law program.
The Nunavut Teachers Education Program is another example of that, where back in the late 80’s, under the eastern arctic teacher education program where the old arctic college was asked to develop a program.
So, a request can come from an outside agency who’s developed a program?
Right now we are working on mines trades training, for example, you know with some of the sponsors to develop a program.
Second can be based on a community based needs assessment, where given communities ask for a type of program to be run, for example, a social work program like we saw which was run in Igloolik, where we had several graduates of the program.
The third way, again, is to look at what the need is in emerging trends.
For example we just talked about is there for an I/T program where we have to have students graduate with a diploma.
In I/T, for example, be able to fix computers and issues around broadband and so on.
So those are the different variations on program delivery and courses.
Go ahead, Tootoo.
Another that it points out in the report here, it talks about a new funding allocation model that the college, the board of governors, or the proper channel it will go from the board to the Minister to the Financial Management Board for approval.
I am just wondering if the minister, or the President could elaborate on where they are at, with that and when can we expect to see that come forward you know as the Minister indicated that one of the major problems that the colleges face that is pointed out in here is just the lack of adequate funding.
So, I am just wondering when we can expect to see that come forward.
The funding allocation model, again, is one recommendation that was in the report that is ongoing within the structure.
In the past, the college has been funded based on the base allocation has been replaced prior to division.
After division that continued.
One of the issues that we were trying to look at is what funding model should be in place.
The Department of Education, along with the college, contracted Georgian College to evaluate the funding allocation model that we were currently using at the college, and then to see how we would move forward to include in that funding formula model what should the base or floor be and how we expand on that model.
When are we going to see that come forward; is it going to be this fiscal year or next fiscal year or five fiscal years from now or next month?
If you have any idea of when that’s going to happen.
Chairman: Please answer.
We would hope to have that model completed by the end of March, go back to the board for a final review and then it would come up to the, from the boards, acquiescence to the Deputy Minister of Education and then as the Minister.
I look forward to it, I am sure that everyone involved looks forward to it, except maybe for the Minister of Finance.
So that’s coming forward, and the other departments, they may have to cough up a little bit of their money.
As the report indicated, that was just one factor identified in there as some of the problems were.
One of the other ones, go further down on the page there, they said there was a great deal of staff concern over the credibility of head office, the senior management team and the college, and the majority of the staff felt that senior management was not dealing with the critical issues and challenges facing the college, and I think Mr. Curley touched on that a little bit earlier.
But I am just wondering, given that that’s out there, what kind of confidence, I guess, can we give the staff members that the minister praised on earlier for the hard work that they are doing at the community-level to make them feel like that the senior management is dealing with the critical issues of the college and then the challenges that it faces.
Chairman: Mr. Tootoo I heard the minister was saying that he was addressing all of the issues.
So that’s surely irrelevant, your question, but I will let him answer it anyways.
I have confidence in the work abilities of our senior management team, the team of the college, and Mr. Clendenning, I think, is moving to put some of those accountability mechanisms in place whether it would be on the fiscal side or the administrative side.
There were some issues like the strong issues raised by some of the employees of the college towards the senior management of the college, and I would expect that in any organization, whether it would be in this House or any other type of work, and I don’t think it’s that rare.
But maybe Mr. Clendenning maybe would like to speak to the point that the member had made earlier, and again, we are following up on the recommendations and we take them seriously.
Maybe Mr. Clendenning could add to that.
Chairman: Please, Mr. Clendenning.
I appreciate the member’s comment, and I just want to assure people that I have the utmost respect for all staff who work for the college regardless of whether they are a senior manager or frontline people.
I also want to say that I have 100 percent confidence in my head office staff.
We have a chief financial officer who has been employed at the college since September of 2003 who has done a lot of good work to strengthen the college’s financial position within the college.
He has also done a lot of hard work with the campuses to support them in improving systems.
That hard work was paid off during the most recent audit of the Auditor General where the Auditor General noted significant improvements in almost every area of our financial management including our budgetary control, the way we handled accounts receivables, and the way we are managing third party contracts.
Mr. Tootoo, you might remember three years ago when I first came here and I had to attend the Standing Committee when the Auditor General produced a report for the year 2001, and in that report, the college was mentioned in almost every chapter for being lax and not being as accountable as they should in those areas.
I think that significant improvement in the short period of time that we have had an adversity there.
Our Director of academic affairs, who works at our head office, is a highly professional individual who has done a lot of work in setting the policy groundwork that we need to update and improve our policies.
In our curriculum management processes, we now have a full time Inuk curriculum manager working in our Head Office who is working with staff on looking at ways we can incorporate language and culture into all of our programs.
For myself, I came to Nunavut with 23 years experience working in post-secondary assistance in another province; 21 years in junior College and 2 years at university.
I have a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in adult education and I feel adequately prepared to provide the leadership that’s required in Nunavut at the present time.
So to answer your questions, I have 100 percent confidence in my Head Office Managers and my Campus Directors and team that we’ve put in place now.
I would put them up against any Senior Management Team in this territory.
I would like to thank Mr. Clendenning for that.
I’m sure that there are a lot of people out there that are happy to hear that and that steps are being taken to address some of the concerns that have been plaguing the College in the past.
You will recall your welcome gift to Nunavut was coming to the Auditor General’s hearing.
One other thing that I want to touch on that’s in there is that there have been previous attempts to reposition and revitalize the College in the past and that those efforts have not succeeded.
I’m just wondering, give that, are there certain things that have been learned from past mistakes, things that have been tried and didn’t work that we can take and build on going into the phase that you’re going through right now.
You have to look at where the College has come from to see where it’s going and to see some of the issues that Mr. Tootoo had mentioned. 18 years ago, when I worked at the College, the College was a directorate of the Department of Education.
It wasn’t a stand alone College until later.
Adult learning, Adult Education Programs as an example, were under the Department of Education.
Later on with the evolution of the Arctic College network, in 1988 and 89, and so on, the college looked at folking itself into Arctic College, and that was the name that was given at that time.
Before that, that wasn’t the case.
When the campus was set up here in Nunavut, with the opening of the Learning Centres, again there was some issues surrounding funding at that time and again there is some issues around how base funded programs are done.
People don’t realize that the College receives a little over $15 million to run different programs.
Very few of those programs that are run are based funded from the College budget.
The College has to go out and access third party funding.
That’s shifting some of the changes that have been talked about that haven’t been as successful where the College has shifted from being based on a per program and to be a lot like the other colleges in Canada where they actually receive most of their funding from third party sources by delivering programs, training, and so on, through corporation entities.
There is an opportunity to do that and we’re moving in that direction with some of the mines training stuff that we’ve talked about.
Some of the creative partnerships in the last year, especially where the college has taken on a bigger role in getting affiliation with some other jurisdictions.
A good example is some of the work that we’re doing with Dalhousie University, the work that we’re doing with Memorial University with the Marine Institute, and the work that we’re doing in Southern Canada with some of the smaller universities and colleges.
Again, that is to place the college in a better position to react and to be able to change its focus.
Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Tootoo, your time is up at the moment, so I’m going to pass onto the next person.
Under G-12, it is very weak, the funding available for training programs that money is barely enough for program development and possibly delivering.
But knowing the fact, that if Department of Community government, the Hamlets or local Learning Centres, Arctic Colleges in the communities I feel that they can help with fees, because we feel we might not have enough resources to do that.
I’d like to ask the minister the resources that are available in the community, like Hamlets or government and the Learning Centres; I feel that they can participate in establishing a trades centre where they can provide those courses.
I’m wondering if they can assistance from those in regards to mining exploration, or the actual mining, because I have a big concern that we don’t have enough funding to train those.
I feel that we don’t have adequate funding to provide those courses.
So I’m wondering how the minister would feel in new to light that there already existing organizations or governments in the community?
Mr. Chairman: Mr. Minister.
The member bring up a good point where the College needs to be able to position it self, not only at the College territorial level but at the community level.
And by positioning itself by using local agencies, whether construction companies, local companies, and the private sector, are indeed to Hamlet or Housing at the local level, then there able to bridge finances, be able to leverage more training within the budget that they have allocated to them.
So each community has an Adult Educator who doesn’t need assessment, and they look at what are the upcoming needs, whether it be construction under trades, or a mining development that might be occurring.
So I would agree with the member that the base amount of funding right now available for trades training in Nunavut, is small within the budget itself, that’s why were trying to access third party funding, and we’ve been very successful in doing that.
We also have a proposal in to our federal partner, which they came back and told us that it’s probably the best proposal they’ve seen any where in the country of Canada, on this type of trades training, that this member is talking about, to give us the extra capacity.
So the answer to the members question is yes, we want to be able to leverage and work with community groups, to partnership whether they be private business or government, at the same time to continue to access third party financing for fund on trades program within the existing budget framework of the College.
Mr. Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Alagalak.
The urgency in finding ways to train miners, exploration assistance, kitchen helpers, stuff like that on those upcoming mining companies that are proposing to establish mines in Kivalliq region.