EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
We are never of the same mind and everyone has their own preferences.
There are students who want English only academic education but there are others who wish for nothing more then learning about their own geography, history, culture and Inuit culture and language being taught in their school, not something from thousands of miles away.
They do not want to lose their language.
Somebody mentioned it earlier that we just concentrate on ensuring that our children get the highest quality of education in our schools and that courses like the Inuit culture or language should not be taught, but I feel very strongly that it should be taught in the schools and that way, our youth will be able to go to other institutions on par with other students.
I find it narrow-minded to state that, not to mention that it is also very prejudicial and hurtful to make that kind of statement in this legislature, especially for Inuit in the smaller communities.
This just highlights the fact that we can never really agree on what should be taught in schools but this is our school system.
If the Minister and his staff could understand the type of curriculum ideas that are being promoted by the Inuit in the communities, then we would be in a good position to teach our students in the Inuit culture and language.
This would make our educational curriculum complete, with relevant Inuit- background, history, geography and other life skills courses along with the North American English curriculum courses.
It is only when all languages and cultures have their own share of the curriculum taught, will the disagreements subside.
My thoughts on this matter are not depleted, but I see that I am running out of time.
Those are my comments at this time, Mr. Chairman.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you. If there is no more. Mr. McLean.
I’m a bit surprised to see you there, but you fit right in.
I’ll keep my comments brief, they won’t be ten minutes.
After about four or five times of doing this after four or five years, it’s hard not to come up with the same old clichés about education in Nunavut.
To date, since we’ve had grade 12 in our community of Baker Lake, I could be wrong but I think I’m correct in assuming that we haven’t had one high school student go onto a university education.
They come over here, they go to Nunavut Arctic College and they’re very successful.
I don’t know why students aren’t pursuing a post-secondary education outside of Nunavut, which I think they should do.
I just want to dwell on the Greenland experience.
I was over there and I observed the education system over there and they’ve been at it for probably 100 years more than us.
What fascinates me is how little hang up there is when it comes to language.
I talked to some young people.
They speak Greenlandic, they speak Danish and now they are incorporating learning English in grade 4 whereas, before it used to be in grade 9.
It’s amazing when you see young people and even people in our age group speaking two or three languages and not getting hung up about it.
It’s amazing and it made me really envious, especially with my mother being a French Canadian and being French, I’ve totally lost the language.
This brings me to where I’m getting here with this little conversation, that I probably have more of a chance to learn French in Nunavut today than I would Inuktitut.
We’ve got a territory of 85 percent who speak Inuktitut; we unilingual people don’t really have much opportunity to learn the language outside the home, which I think is a tragedy.
I’m sure the Department of Education is doing something about it.
But it shouldn’t be the Department of Education’s responsibility to provide Inuktitut classes for us unilingual southerners.
A lot of people say, well, you should learn it at home.
Well we all know what it’s like to learn stuff at home sometimes today, even for the younger people, let alone us older people.
What I’m getting to here, is, education is sort of a full thing.
I don’t think it’s the Department of Education’s responsibility to teach everything in the school.
That’s just my humble opinion.
Like I say, language of instruction, I still can’t see why we’re not there with the Inuktitut language by teaching it in the schools from kindergarten to grade 12.
It should be mandatory, no matter where you’re from or what nationality you are, and it should be taught by qualified teachers and you shouldn’t graduate from high school without it.
I firmly believe that it should be in there.
If you’re from down south, I don’t want to say forced, but you should be made to take Inuktitut lessons from kindergarten to grade 12.
Like I said, the Greenland experience, no one gets hung up on speaking three languages, where we do seem to get hung up on speaking one.
There’s nothing wrong with learning a couple of languages, but then again, it should be the responsibility of the whole territory not just Department of Education.
There are other organizations out there and we know them well, so that’s where I’m coming from with that.
Culture in the school, well yes, we have to teach it but at the end of the day, you’ve got to go to university and you’ve got to be able to function in a society in both worlds.
We can’t shelter ourselves up here from the southern society because it’s too dominant and we have to deal with it everyday.
I go on about Baker Lake.
Well you’ve been to Baker Lake.
The elders formed and operated and went out and looked for money to open up an Inuit heritage centre.
There was no Government of the Northwest Territories money and there was no Government of Nunavut money.
They went out there because they wanted to maintain the culture of Baker Lake by opening their own Inuit Heritage Center.
And through about five years of hard work and soliciting policies through the Federal Governments, they opened it up for five years ago and I am sure most of you have been in there.
Now, on that part of it, we today have in there working a unilingual female Inuk running that facility all day.
Now, how many Departments in this Government can boast that an unilingual female Inuk running the facility in a Heritage Center?
I do not think that is hard to find, find out.
And Winnie Owinniak trained under Dave Webster for a few years and she is doing an excellent job.
And that is an example of a community doing something.
And you know I am going here and a lot of people might not like what I am saying.
Now, there is another unilingual elder in Baker Lake called Jacob Ikinnuit.
He was on APTN the last three or four weeks.
He has a building outside the school and it is open all day when he is not out pursuing his traditional lifestyle of hunting and fishing and making camps for finding caribou and fish for fifty or sixty people in town.
And he is an elder, he is 72 years old.
And anybody, anybody, I welcome you to go into that facility, it is not fancy, but anybody in my community, Inuit or Qallunaaq can go in there and learn about the Inuit culture, but you better know how to speak Inuktitut because that is the only way that you are going to get taught it.
But you can go in there and there are always kids in there.
There are always adults in there and there are always elders working on cultural things.
Anything you want to know about Inuit culture, he will tell you.
He will train you.
And that is what I am saying. I am fortunate to have committed individuals and the Government does not fund this facility either, it is done through him with some help through Brighter Futures money.
And it is a cultural school.
We have a few small cultural activities in our community that instil pride and teach the Inuit culture and the kids in the schools go over to these facilities during school hours.
So, what I am saying is teaching the Inuit culture in a community like mine is a community issue also.
Not just the Department of Education issue or the Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth issue.
It is a community issue and I think they have been given the resources through various funding partners to be able to provide this and I think it is working out really, really well.
No, I do not think that the Department of Education should be providing all of the cultural aspects in our territory, but I will argue that with my counterparts any day, but what I am saying, the cultural part of it should be a community issue.
I am getting off the education thing here, but I am not.
It is a whole life experience; it is just not an eight to five experience, learning culture.
It is not a nine to five experience, it is a life experience.
And like, when you come to Baker Lake, if you come Baker Lake during that session, you will see it.
It is not fancy, but the message gets across and that is what I basically ask to say about education and culture.
Why our kids fail in school, it kills me, it kills me.
I watch kids grow up.
They get to Kindergarten to Grade 6, 85-95% attendance.
And some of these starts knocking off and then they get into that Alberta curriculum and kids that I see every day, my neighbour’s kids and my relatives kids.
They are good kids, they are good kids, and they are not punks that you see on TV.
They are not dropping out of school because they are not conducive to society or they, you know what I am saying?
They are dropping out because they do not have the skills to finish high school and become productive.
You know, I do not want to say the wrong thing, but it kills me when I see these kids and I try to encourage them to stay in school and they are my neighbour’s kids and my friends kids.
And when they get to Grade 9, 10, 11 and 12, they are out.
And they are wondering the streets at night and they are trying, you know, they are lost and they are asking themselves, well, where is my function in society?
You know, when they need a job, they do not tell me they need more culture, they say, Glen, I need a job.
Where am I going to get a job?
And I come from the fourth largest community in Nunavut with an unemployment rate of 40-45-50% and at the end of the day when these kids drop out of school and they don’t have room for them in Arctic College, they are in my office saying, Glen I need a job, I need training.
They don’t tell me they need more culture.
They tell me I need a job.
I need a house.
What I’m saying is, how do we keep this group of kids everywhere, I think I can speak for most communities, in every community, there is this group between 9, 10, 11, and that age group between 15 and whatever 20.
One culture is telling them to get an education, complete school, get a university degree and become a productive tax payer and the other culture is telling them if you do not learn to be a hunter, fisherman and everything else involved, they are caught between this.
If they can not do one properly and what is happening is they are growing up and not being good in either culture.
This is where the identity problems are starting to come in.
I don’t know where we start to attack the problem.
I don’t think it is just an education problem, I think it is the whole community's issue and where we attack it, I don’t know.
Whether it is health and social services, education, CLEY, the federal government, the territorial government but we got to maintain that we take this group and the groups are getting bigger and bigger.
You know what it is like out there.
Jobs are getting more technical and I haven’t seen this government in the last four years, downgrade any of the job descriptions where we can start filling these positions with lesser skilled people.
In your Member’s Statement today, you spoke in regards to doing over five or six hundred jobs descriptions to make it easier to get into the work force.
At the end of the day, we know who does the hiring in the government, and is this really lip service, is this really going to actually happen?
How many unilingual Inuit do we have working in the government?
I don’t want you to answer it.
You can’t answer it.
So you know what I’m saying, that is just a statement and I’ll say this again next year and I am just stating that.
You don’t have to answer me Peter; it’s just my frustration over the last four years.
Are we making any progress here?
I know the graduation numbers are going up but on the other hand, you know, the drop out rate, is that going up also?
I don’t know those rates but you know we’ll probably eventually get them.
So, I’m not looking at the Department of Education to be the be-all and end-all, for all of Nunavut.
That’s our issue to deal with.
So, on the upside, I’m very pleased, when I do tours and I see the beautiful facilities that we’re building in Nunavut.
This would not have happened with the NWT.
I’ll say that to this day.
When we were with the NWT, we got left behind on the capital infrastructure.
But now it’s nice to see, we’re actually starting to see new schools in Arviat, pretty well every community in Nunavut is getting what they want when it comes to education facilities.
So, I commend the department on that.
The department has acknowledged that we need new facilities so you have done probably the best job in the history of this territory in regards to replacing existing old facilities everywhere.
I go and see Clyde River, there is a new school and I’m out of time and when we get into those sections I will ask it.
I thought my comments were going to be brief but I’m sorry.
You were the last on the list for general comments.
I was going to stop you initially but you made sense, so I decided to give you more time.
I’m sorry; I’m late as I was at a doctor’s appointment.
Regarding the issue of education, are we at general comments?
The Department of Education is to be commended for their hard work and dedication.
There are some programs that they are working on that might reflect cultural aspects and to try and incorporate the Inuit culture.
So the statement I would like to say is regarding the language issue, there’s always been a push for more schooling in Inuktitut and I know the Minister will work hard work to ensure that we get more Inuit teachers.
If he can work with the Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth, to ensure we get more funds for the territory.
And with the Ministers' statement previously, Sheila Copps, made a statement regarding Aboriginal People’s language initiative.
She made a statement about funding in Winnipeg and I just wanted to comment that he work with the Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth to try and funnel more funds into the territory from the various projects in the Federal Government and also to ensure that he continue to train more Inuit to become teachers; as well, to open up more opportunities for elders to be trainers and teachers in the communities; even if they are unilingual.
I won’t have too many questions to the Department of Education but just wanted to state that he should work hard with the Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth to ensure that more funds are funnelled from the Federal Government.
It is evident that our concerns should be made a priority and with the division of Nunavut, Inuit make up a majority of the population, and with that in mind, I think the Federal Government needs to recognize and acknowledge that Nunavut is very unique.
Those are all the general comments I have for now.
If there are questions I will give them an opportunity to ask.
I will now give Mr. Tootoo and opportunity to speak.
I think our Honourable colleague from Kugluktuk would like to say a few more things as well when I’m done.
Just getting into and adding to some of the things that some of the other Members have raised, I think it’s important that we take a serious look at the student retention rates in the schools.
The issue of funding and how the schools are funded, I’ve been raising that for a number of years now.
I think the way the system runs right now, it’s funded per/capita, same type of per/capita formula that we’re using as an argument for the Federal Government saying it doesn’t work.
For us, it’s the same kind of system that we’re funding our schools on.
I think there are some problems there.
When you look at scenarios where you have increased responsibilities passed on to some of the administrators in those schools, to have more teaching as well and cut down on the time the teachers have to prepare for things like that and not only have problems with retaining students but retaining teachers.
There’s been quite an increase with turn-over rates within the teachers throughout Nunavut.
One comment I want to make going back to the Minister’s opening comments, where he said the increase in the department, primarily to cover salary costs, due to the negotiated collective agreement with the teachers, caused the greatest increase in there.
I don’t think you would find one teacher out there to say that they are overpaid.
They probably still feel that they deserve more than what they’re getting given what they’ve had to deal with over the last five or six years as far as increased work loads and the way that they’ve been treated.
I think the people who were here for the money are gone and the teachers that we have are teachers that like being here, this is their home, and they want to be here.
I think, the concerns over the underlying connotations that could be taken from comments like that, it’s just an indication of how the relationships may have been.
One of the other things that I remember back in 1999, when I was campaigning, I met with the then Deputy Minister of Education and he and I both agreed that we have to do a better job of teaching in the two languages that are in our schools today.
Mr. McLean indicated in his comments making mandatory courses, if they’re in Inuktitut stream, then there should be a mandatory English component and if you’re in the English stream, there should be a mandatory Inuktitut component to that.
Having said that, those components have to be structured, you can’t just go in and wing it.
You need to have structure and this is what we’re going to teach at this grade, this grade, this grade, this grade, right throughout the whole year.
Just like teachers do lesson plans right now for all the other programs that they do.
As far as curriculum development goes, I think the materials and resources have to be there to do that properly, otherwise it’s just the same old lip service that that we got from the Government of the Northwest Territories saying we’ll give you a little bit of money, go teach your Inuktitut program with no real resources to go along with it.
I think that’s something that has to be looked at as well.
One of the other things that was mentioned was Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit.
That’s one of the goals, integrating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit into the curriculum.
I think that is fine to say go and integrate it into your school but that’s probably difficult, given a lot of our teachers aren’t from Nunavut.
The administrators, I would say, the majority aren’t from Nunavut.
Maybe they need some help to hear what exactly it is that you want us to integrate into our school.
It’s all fine to say go and integrate Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit but what is it?
Someone mentioned in the House, during this sitting, to some people it’s just a skidoo trip or a picnic or something like that.
But there’s more to it and I think the department has to do a better job of letting the schools know exactly what they mean by that to give them some parameters to work with in.
Another thing that the chairman mentioned is the students having a problem with acquiring the right number and the right kinds of credits to enable them to continue on in their education.
I am just wondering if a student chooses and decides to further their education in a specific field at a southern university, will the courses they need be offered in their community.
There was a response given the other day, maybe they didn’t know, they decided not to take the right courses but in all cases are those courses that they may want to take or need to take offered in the school in their community that they’re going in so I think that that’s something that needs to be looked at.
As far as the drop out rate goes, they talked about earlier about the per capita funding; basically I’ve been an advocate of trying to say we need to look at going back to program funding, to fund programs like trades, different trades programs.
I know when I went to school the only thing that kept me as long as it did is they had building instruction program, shop program, they had a music program but I couldn’t carry a tune for that handle for that one.
It wasn’t me but for some people who’ll keep them in school.
Those are the things I think that we need to try to identify for these people, these young people who are falling through the cracks because the system there isn’t suitable to them.
It’s like Mr. McLean said, they’re just not asked.
There are a lot of kids out there, a lot of people out there who could be excellent carpenters, excellent trades people but they’re never given the opportunity in the high school to realize that.
They say well you can’t do the academic well then I’m no good.
That’s what they think.
They don’t realize they could go into shop programs and excel and then they can go on and take a trade and become a journey person and be a productive member of society instead of dropping out and potentially just end up being a burden on our social program.
I really believe that that is a direction that the Department of Education has to look in the future.
I just want to reiterate from my Member’s Statement again the displeasure at the status quo, library services, although there was a note passed to the Minister earlier today saying that there is something that will be done.
I’m looking forward to identifying exactly where that is in the main estimates but I think that pretty much covers what I have.
My apologies Mr. Minister but I’m allowing the Members to give their general comments.
I just want to touch on teacher education.
You can correct me if I’m wrong. I’m sure you have an agreement with one of the universities, McGill University, about training Inuinnaqtun for students to become teachers and in that agreement, if for some reason, I’ll use this as an example, if for some reason one of the students fail and they said you have to wait for three years to get back to try again to become a teacher.
I’m sure the Minister remembers that last year, I talked to him about this issue at one point; I can’t remember exactly when, but why is it three years?
Why can’t students who want to continue the following year?
So, you won’t be forgetting as to what she’s done about six months ago or something.
Instead of waiting for 3 years, why is that 3 year waiting period there but I will ask that question.
I just want to point it out now because it’s a thing that needs to be talked about to McGill University because of your agreement but once we get to that I want to get some clearer suggestions as to where this department’s going to be going with that agreement that you have.
I know it’s a good agreement but there are some things that need to be worked on.
Another thing that I want to touch on is the high school students’ option.
I remember when I was going to school in Inuvik, we had a choice to go either in the, for example, like taking classes in this, let us take typing or home economics, a trade where you do the carpentry.
I cannot remember what you call it, industrial or something like that.
I think that is what they are called, but anyways, how can we put these back in the school system?
Like my colleague said, not all of us here are academically inclined.
So we need to look at that option.
It is interesting that Member has brought up by my constituents, maybe that is the route to go to try and keep them interested in going to the schools and in that way, when they want to go to the carpentry or when they go to the other options they want to show these skills and they could find out for themselves, this is what I would be interested in.
Maybe this is what I want to do in the future.
So, those are the two I just want to mention and I will be trying to keep an eye out for those as we go along.
I will give Mr. Tootoo another chance to air his comments.
I always forget something.