EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
The mayors are involved and we all know we as MLA's work very closely with them.
Where does the Minister figure that he is going to identify or where are these or this organization going to identify where they can seek extra funding.
Could I have the member repeat his question please.
Mr. McLean: Ah yes, I'll make it brief.
Where does the Minister suspect that this organization is going to retrieve outside funding other than the Nunavut Government to help with our soapstone programs.
The Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association much like Nunavut Tourism who we also assist with funding has been able to track new supporters and they have been able to more than double the amount of money that we contribute to the association.
So, I'm very confident that this association will also be able to obtain federal, provincial and territorial funds or support from other groups that the government does not have access now.
That's reassuring again.
Can the minister reassure me as an MLA that comes from a community that relies heavily on the carving industry, that money once it's retrieved and once it's accessed that most of it will go where the need is.
That's in the community and not to be spent on organizations, meetings, and things like that.
I will remind the Member that our efforts with the Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association the money that they will direct is up to the association and the amount of dollars that they will be directing is beyond my control at this time.
Speaker: Thank you Ministers.
Minister rather.
We note that the time for Question Period is up.
Written Question 14 - 1(3): Ministerial Portfolio Responsibilities
I have a written question to the Premier.
As we all know since we elected a Member for the Cabinet this morning and I am sure that the Premier will be giving him a portfolio.
As regular Members of the Legislative Assembly sometimes we don't know who to direct our question to. So I would like to ask the Premier if they will put into one portfolio the income support program.
Also, during oral questions I tried to ask about the two ministers taking care of one responsibility like the P3 program that should be taken care of by one minister.
The page will pick up that document from you.
Tabled Document 73 - 1(3): Grade 12 Graduates by Year 1987-1999
I wish to table a document titled "Grade 12 Graduates by Year 1987-1999" requested by Mr. Akesuk in the Committee of the Whole.
Tabled Document 74 - 1(3): Inuit Teachers-Current Staff
Hon. James Arvaluk: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table this document titled "Inuit Teachers, Current Staff" requested by Mr. Akesuk during the Committee of the Whole.
Tabled Document 75 - 1(3): Education Capital Projects for Pond Inlet
I would like to table documents further to my question to the Minister of Education.
These were given to me just before I got into the House and they are directed to the Minister of Education concerning capital projects that I had mentioned under the departments.
He will understand the contents once he reads them and I presume he would respond in a timely manner.
Speaker: Item 13.
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and other Matters.
Tabled Document 41-1(3), Tabled Document 51-1(3), Tabled Document 60-1(3), Tabled Document 61-1(3), Tabled Document 68-1(3). According to the authority vested in me by Motion 3-1(3), the Committee of the Whole will stay in Session until it reports itself out with Mr. Iqaqrialu as chairperson.
We will now take a 20 minute break before the commencement of the Committee of the Whole.
>>House recessed at 2:53 p.m. and resumed at 3:28 p.m.
Chairperson (Mr. Iqaqrialu) (interpretation): The committee will now come to order.
Mr. Arvaluk do you want to start in your seat or do you want to go to the witness table.
Hon. James Arvaluk: Thank you Mr. Chairman when we met in the committee of the whole last week and discussed capital I was asked if the conceptual drawings for the replacement high school in Cambridge Bay could be made available.
I committed to relaying that request to the Department of Public Works.
I am now informed that these drawings are now available for viewing at the Department of Public Works.
In fact earlier, members had the opportunity first hand to discuss the project first hand and discuss the project in detail.
Mr. Chairman, last week a series of 5 motions concerning the Department of Education’s capital budget were tabled and passed in this committee.
I would like to offer general responses to these motions.
Motion 33-1(3), which reads in part, “ that this committee wants the department to prioritise those capital projects for schools which have health and safety or maintenance needs which have resulted in school closures, overcrowding and the lack of basic facilities like gymnasiums and libraries".
To this motion, I respond that I agree.
This is exactly what we will be doing as we develop our twenty-year capital plan.
Our capital planner has been hired and will be joining our staff in the late summer.
I am pleased to report that I am in full agreement with this motion.
Regarding the following four motions, motion numbers 34-1(3), 35-1(3), 36-1(3), and 37-1(3).
I want to assure the members that I am considering these motions carefully as I wish to take into account the wishes of the members where that is possible.
It is my suggestion that we take into account priorities of all our communities in Nunavut and we also move into partnering when the community is willing to contribute.
Chairperson (interpretation): I think you will have to go back to the reading and you will have to reread everything because we could not get the interpretation.
I apologise  Mr. Minister.
Mr. Akesuk: Thank you Mr. Chairman (interpretation) Motion 34 is where we lost the interpretation, regarding motion 34-1(3).
Hon. James Arvaluk: Regarding the following four motions, motion number 34-1(3), 35-1(3), 36-1(3), and 37-1(3).
It is my suggestion that we take into account priorities of all our communities in Nunavut and we move into partnering when the community is willing to contribute.
It is my wish in this area that we as a government remain flexible so we can deal with individual circumstances that may differ from community to community.
I believe that we all wish to take into account community based priorities, community consultation and opportunities to partner with our Hamlets and other organizations within Nunavut.
I wish to thank the members for tabling these motions and I continue to give them serious consideration.
On the matter of the cost sharing formula for these extra facilities, Mr. Moody made the correct statement in that committee meeting and I ask that you recommend Mr. Moody for the witness table.
Under item number 9-15 we were under field operations and that is where we left off.
This is where we left off.
Mr. Akesuk (interpretation): I thank the Minister of Education.
I am happy he can sit with us.
I would like the Minister of Education and his witnesses and officials to come to the witness table.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you for taking your seats.
Committee members on your behalf we welcome the minister and we open the floor to questions and comments.
We have been dealing with this department for a number of days now under the education department and hopefully our work concerning this department will come to some sort of resolution.
So keep that in mind.
At this time we have Mr. Irqittuq.
Concerning the motions and the responses the minister just made.
He says he will give them serious consideration, but there was reference to a twenty-year plan once again and I am wondering because of the motions if this could be handled in a more urgent manner.
So is he deferring this as his response and referring it to just the twenty year capital plan without commitment.
When you were sitting, I am afraid we did not recognize your officials.
Mr. Minister please introduce your witnesses.
On my right is Robert Moody the Deputy Minister of Education, and to my left is Connie Brown, manager of finances for the department.
There was a question posed to you by Mr. Irqittuq.
Do you wish to respond Mr. Minister.
This means all the communities at this time do not have capital projects yet.
Before we make any drawings we want to find out what kind of designs they want to see for their schools.
How they have to be planned.
Do we need to do some planning.
We want to look at this in the twenty-year plan.
In that way we cannot overlook the communities.
We cannot go in and build a school for the community without having spoken to the communities first.
This just reiterates that thought.
I believe that the drawings are almost completed for the schools in the communities and I see them as tabled documents.
In fact I do not think we require huge amounts of funding for capital projects because this has been raised as an issue numerous times.
In reference to his response it seems to me that he is just using the motions to not commit to the motions that we had approved in the House during committee of the whole, and for the past winter it seems to me that we were already agreed to implement those plans.
To me the response seems to be non-inclusive of the schedule that we were hoping for.
Although it was not quite a question, do you wish to respond Mr. Minister.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): I believe the Minister of Finance is in a better position to respond to that question but as I understood the motion, it contained recommendations.
It was strongly urging from you to me to consider those options and I agreed to consider them, and if there were any new funds on top of the planning wherever it might come from we would have to come to terms.
If there can be extra funding set aside we would have to find out where from and because of these factors I can’t commit without the proper plans in place.
But as I understand it, to consider the recommendations and that is what I am doing.
I cannot act upon them.
I cannot commit to them and set aside the funding immediately without other factors that I have to include during my tenure as minister with the FMBS.
You ask when that is going to happen then it becomes obvious that our wishes as regular members will be ignored and this meeting will lead nowhere.
It is obvious again.
I will break the law if I try to approve them or if I disapprove.
The estimated budget and all the funding that has been planned, the 610 million dollars, each minister cannot approve them by themselves.
They have to be approved by the cabinet as a whole.
They have to find out where the funds are coming from.
We have to make sure we are not breaking one of our rules or laws.
For this reason I would like my colleague to be aware that we have to abide by our rules.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you Minister for Education.
We are on 9-15 of the field operations, grants and contributions.
In spite of that you may ask your questions and I will allow you to ask questions.
Mr. Chairman, I do not agree with his response.
So therefore, I would like to deal with this again.
Mr. Chairman, the recommendations that were passed, perhaps the rest of the cabinet members did not see them.
Chairperson (interpretation): Minister for Education.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): They have heard and they have seen them if you would like to defer for clarification.
Your question does not seem to be in line with education.
Perhaps you could ask the Premier about the procedure, or the Minister of Finance, Kelvin Ng, could direct his question to the cabinet members.
But I want you to know these were recommendations.
We will have to balance the budget out because we have limited dollars.
We have to budget everything and we might have to re-profile.
So we have to agree to the recommendations which items would be profiled.
As he stated, he cannot make a decision by himself.
We made the resolutions so he can consider the resolutions because we were urgently, at the cabinet level; they did not consider our recommendations.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): We will not be able to consider them until they get the proposal from the department of education.
If we do not make the recommendations to the cabinet and I know that we have to consider some aspects of it as to how we can deal with the request.
I want my colleague to know that if we do not we have to apply to the cabinet level and we have to abide by the rules.
We cannot just agree or make changes instantly to the Main Estimates.
We have to abide by our rules and our standards and criteria.
The Department of Finance and the Department of Justice have to review them.
The Office of the Premier has to review all these aspects.
So that is why we cannot make any decisions as I had stated before.
We will review them and consider them.
GNWT’s standards and criteria, are we still using those for the capital estimates.
We did not use the 5-year capital plan.
We are still using the same criteria for capital plans.
I ask this question just because usually when the designs are completed and the foundations completed some of these programs are not in the capital estimates, and you state you do not want to break your rules or contradict your rules.
Why did you remove the design for Cape Dorset’s school.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): Thank you Mr. Chairman. I understood that looking at those and reviewing those in the 5-year capital plan, we reviewed the design but they were never given any funding from the GNWT.
So it just means that they were wrong.
They were never given any funding or contracted out any companies to start the construction of the designs.
Especially the two areas completed by the GNWT and that is why we did not break any of our rules.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you Mr. Minister for education.
Yes they use huge amounts of money reviewing it, doing the blue prints, and designing it and all that. They use huge amounts of money and they expend large sums of money.
So, if they do a different design they will have to redraw it with large sums of money and some of these are already existing in our community.
This does not make sense to leave the ones that have already been dealt with.
That is why we made these recommendations in the motions because in some communities, designs of the schools have been completed and they have been approved by the GNWT and they spent the money on the designs.
I just wanted to point this out because there have already been other schools that have been blue printed.
The designs are already completed and are we going to set a precedent here and delete these items.
Mr. Minister for Education.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): No we will not do that.
We have a twenty-year plan for capital items.
We will continue with the projects that have been designed within the twenty years as long as we have the design of the building we will continue to build it within the twenty year span.
The GNWT never paid for the design we could ask the communities whether they like that design.
So there are other options that we could take or we could ask them if we should just construct it like that and whether they have built the foundations.
What I’m trying to say is that in the 2000/2001 fiscal year there is no funding allotted in the education capital estimates, that is included in there and that is why you made the recommendations in the motion, because there is no funding allotted for that purpose.
Now I cannot say that I will put lots of funds into that now.
I want to review the motions.
The plan for the school has been designed for the school already.
Does it mean that the designs are done in some of the communities.
Does that mean that they do not have to do the project right away, even though the design is finished.
The ones that are not approved in the motion cannot go ahead.
These motions were just recommendations to us.
So that is why we are saying we will consider the recommendations.
When we discuss Bill 13 and when we come to the recommendations made by the committee of the whole then we will consider them.
If we have to take for instance, the government leader could explain a little bit better than I could, if we get a recommendation we cannot do anything about it right away.
We ask questions of the minister and ordinary members that the 5-year plan is going to go ahead.
The minister told us a while ago that they are not using the 5-year capital plan that came from the GNWT government, and I wanted to know why they are not using those capital plans.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.  Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you Mr. Barnabas.
For that question I already mentioned that and I guess the member has forgotten that I already mentioned that.
When we became the Government of Nunavut on April 1, 1999, there were many programs that had to do with construction.
There were not any plans put forward by the government.
They had deferred them so many times.
Now that we are the Nunavut Government there are many things that we have to do.
Not just in the way of building schools but many projects that were not allotted any money by the GNWT.
I know that we had to deal with emergency items last year and I know that at the same time we would also like to use the 5-year capital plan from the GNWT.
However, the only thing is we do not have enough funding to do all those projects that the members are talking about.
So we are saying right now, even up to today what we are trying to do is do the things that have to be done right away.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you Mr. Minister. Mr. Barnabas.
If we could take a twenty minute break for the regular members to have a meeting.
So we can get some more information on this topic.
Twenty minute break for the regular members to have a meeting and then we will come back.
>>Committee recessed at 3:56 and resumed at 4:38 p.m.
Chairperson (interpretation): At this time under item 9-15.
Are there comments or questions to page 9-15.
The floor is open.
Concerning adult basic education we were in grants and contributions do you have that in front of you.
Chairperson (interpretation): Going back to page 9-14, branch summary, total operations and maintenance, 29 million 442 thousand dollars.
Chairperson (interpretation): Further down total expenditures, 29 million 442 thousand dollars.
To the following page of 9-16, Department of Education detail of work performed on behalf of third parties.
Under page 9-16 concerning Bank of Montreal scholarship program.
Is it 10 thousand dollars or10 million dollars.
Hon. James Arvaluk: This figure of 10 thousand dollars Mr. Chairman is a figure from the Bank of Montreal geared towards scholarship programs for the youth in Nunavut.
Is that simply a contribution from the bank or is this…
Chairperson (interpretation): If you are grateful to me perhaps the answers will be evident and you have to indicate to me that you thank me so that I'll recognize your question is completed.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): At the time of the creation of the government they wanted to continue scholarship programs for five-year terms.
So the Nunavut Government through the Department of Education will be handing out scholarships for 1 thousand dollars per student who are interested in higher learning for tuition and materials for their books and stuff and this is to encourage scholarships which we receive from the Bank of Montreal.
We in turn take it from the bank and reimburse them to the students that receive the scholarships while pursuing their higher education.
I am not really sure.
How long has this scholarship been in effect, the scholarship that the Nunavut Government receives from the Bank of Montreal.
Mr. Puqiqnak when you finish can you recognize the Chairperson, so I know when to ask the minister to respond to the question.
We have been receiving this for two years now and when we had a meeting I told you, I think it was Saturday that I would be receiving another 10 thousand dollars from the Bank of Montreal representatives.
It has been ongoing for about 2 years now and they will give us 10 thousand dollars every year for 5 years.
There are 26 communities in Nunavut and 10 thousand dollars is not very much to distribute amongst the 26 communities.
You mentioned this is the second year that we received this scholarship from the Bank of Montreal for students’ purposes, for the use of the students.
I wonder when the Bank of Montreal will be, which program is this under is it for smaller communities.
Is it for people that do not have a Bank of Montreal in their communities.
Which program are you putting this under.
The Bank of Montreal gives that 10 thousand dollars for a scholarship program.
As you know sometimes the students at the Arctic College or the university or taking trade programs, the students don't usually have that much money even though we provide them with student financial assistance they usually don't have much money to spend.
So what we do is give them a scholarship for those that don't, to help them out and to recognize them and the Department of Education is planning right now who would be eligible for that 10 thousand dollars.
Another one Mr. Chairman, is the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation.
In the year 2000 this Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation will be giving 76 students in the amount of 200 thousand dollars to be distributed among the students as a scholarship to further their education.
That would also be a scholarship for some students as well.
Any questions on 9-16.
Any comments or questions.
Everybody is in agreement.
Turn the page to 9-17.
Department of Education, distribution of budget.
Any questions on this page.
Everybody's in favour.
Chairperson (Interpretation): Going back to the first page that we started on.
Page 9-3, under 9-3 Details of Expenditures, Department of Education, Program Summary, Detail of Expenditures.
Any comments or questions from the members on this page.
Total operations and maintenance, 135 million 149 thousand.
Total, I would like to make a note, I would like to say that I would like to defer Capital Expenditures and Total Expenditures of the department under Details of Expenditure in the amount of 150 thousand 474 dollars.
I would like to defer that.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you Mr. Nutarak. We are under item…Mr. Nutarak.
Committee Motion 57 - 1(3): Deferral of Kitikmeot Department of Education Capital Estimates
Mr. Chairman I move that this committee defer the consideration for the Capital Estimates for the Kitikmeot region under the Department of Education until the estimates of all other departments have been approved.
We can go back to the Department of Education once we have dealt with the other departments just before we finish with Bill 13.
I am sorry can you hold on a second.
The motion is in order any questions on the motion, comments.
Hon. James Arvaluk (interpretation): Just a question Mr. Chairman.
There will be a barge early before the summer and we have to wait a long time for the barge to come into the Kitikmeot region.
They have the barge going to the Kitikmeot region very early so I just want to make sure that you have considered the barge shipment season to Kitikmeot before you make the deferral.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): Yes we realize that.
We can defer that further until we have discussed Bill 13 and you cannot approve everything until Bill 13 has been dealt with.
So that is why we want to go onto other departments before we get back to the Department of Education's Main Estimates.
We are just deferring it in the meantime because we cannot let them; it is not law until we deal with Bill 13 anyway.
Hon. Jack Anawak (interpretation): I just want to get some clarification on why just Kitikmeot is mentioned in this motion.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): The reason why we said the Capital Estimates for Kitikmeot region is we have questions on that, the Capital Estimates, we asked the minister questions but he said to us that he will just think about the recommendations because he has to meet with the Cabinet first.
So what we want to do is talk to the Minister of Education on this before we make a motion.
Perhaps if I could clarify to the members.