EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
They were in full support throughout the whole process and it was good to have those healthy discussions and we’d go back and forth to each other and figure out what the best way would be to come up with these, so, I’m also really glad that Lootie Toomasie is here to be here with the passage of this bill.
Mr. Chairman, these are the wishes of the communities and they have waited patiently to have a Bill and Act that will truly reflect the realities in the communities.
Thank you, very much for the hard work of all the Members.
They were very patient and cooperative in the drafting of this Bill.
Mr. Chairman, there was some discussion regarding the hamlets being in competition with businesses and we have come to an agreement on those issue and other things within the Bill.
Thank you, very much for your support in this matter.
Let’s continue to work together and don’t be afraid to let me know if you need anything else from the department.
I’d also like to thank the staff for their dedication and hard work.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, as well to the mayors and the law clerk.
Now, perhaps we’ll start finding out some of the problems they’ll have with these acts now that it will actually be implemented.
We’ll move onto Bill 30, with the Department of Education.
Bill 30.
I will now ask Minister of Department of Education.
I’m pleased to be here with you today to review the business plan and the main estimates for the 2003/2004 fiscal year for the Department of Education.
The Department of Education will see an increase in its operating budget next year of $7.4 million dollars.
The greater part of this increase will be allocated to school operation, the language of instruction initiative and Nunavut Arctic College.
We have made progress over the last year Mr. Chairman.
On the school side, enrolments are up, graduation from grade 12 continues to be steady and curriculum work is proceeding.
We have also begun to consult the public on the Language of Instruction initiative.
We increased funding support for District of Education Authorities.
We also increased funding for daycares to help ensure more spaces are available to support the crucial early years.
Mr. Chairman, the Department has also worked closely with various partners over the past year to continue the efforts to provide training opportunities to our adult population.
In that work, there has been close cooperation with Nunavut Arctic College and innovation such as an older-workers’ Pilot Project involving elders in our teaching and learning centers.
The Department is now working with other Departments and Nunavut Arctic College on an adult learning strategy that will address the full range of adult education and training requirements and provide direction for adult programs into the future.
We anticipate a draft of the strategy for consultation and released in the fall.
Mr. Chairman, as you know, we have also increased the FAN support for students and Beneficiaries and made improvements to the Income Support Program with a particular emphasis on assisting more individuals to receive training.
Mr. Chairman, funding in the 2003-2004 Budget for School Operations has increased.
However, costs have also increased including teachers’ salaries, utilities and enrolment.
As the result, expenditures in all sections of the Department have been reviewed closely to ensure that critical areas including school operations are maintained at acceptable levels.
The increases seen in various areas of the Department are primarily to cover salary costs.
The Negotiated Salary Increase in the Teachers Federation Agreement will account for the greatest increase.
As well, a total of $2 million in 2003-2004 will be targeted towards the language of instruction initiatives.
This funding will allow the Department of Education to move forward in the development of much needed Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun Curriculum and resources for schools and to design a model of instruction that works best for our children and supports the goals of a quality education system with bilingual graduates.
Finally, additional funding of $1.2 million dollars has been provided to Nunavut Arctic College.
This will also help to address their funding issues for utilities, maintenance, and student housing.
Mr. Chairman, the needs in education and income support are great.
This presents many challenges to government and we are also aware that there are many competing demands for funds and important priorities.
The budget proposed for 2003/2004 advances the important work of the Department of Education within the financial constraints that the government faces.
I am confident that we will continue to improve programs and services but realize that the pace of change will not be as rapid as some desire it to be.
Thank you for your attention and I will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
You may go to the witness table if you wish, with your staff, Minister Kilabuk.
I would like to first of all, apologize that I did not ascertain the wish of the committee according to the procedures.
Sorry for getting ahead of myself to the committee.
Is it okay for these people to go to the witness table?
Minister Kilabuk, please introduce your staff.
To my left, Tom Rich my deputy Minister and to my right is Ian Rose who is also working in our office in the policy division.
I will now ask the chairperson from the Standing Committee, Mr. Nutarak to make his opening comments.
As per our usual practice, I will be stating the opening comments from the Standing Committee on Health and Education.
As chair of the Standing Committee on Health and Education, I am pleased to have this opportunity to make some introductory remarks as we begin deliberations on the budget of the Department of Education.
The Standing Committee notes that the Department of Education’s Operations Maintenance budget for 2003/2004 has increased by nearly 3%.
Chairperson (interpretation): At this point we do not have a quorum.
We will have to ring the bell.
Mr. Nutarak (interpretation): Mr. Chairman, back to my opening remarks, I will just go on from where I stopped.
The Operations and Maintenance for 2003/2004, has increased by nearly 3 percent from 2002/2003 to a projected total of $159 million, 970 thousand dollars.
Despite this increase, Members are concerned that this is not nearly enough to adequately address forced growth issues in many of our growing communities.
The number of students in our schools is increasing steadily year by year.
The Committee strongly feels that the needs of allocating school funding must keep pace with the needs of our population.
The challenge of incorporating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit into the education system is an ongoing one.
The Committee supports and encourages the Minister in his efforts in this area.
Members encourage the Minister to address the policy and funding issues surrounding the hiring of cultural instructors, insurance coverage for culturally based land programs and the development of Early Childhood Education Programs and the consideration of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit principals with respect to disciplinary issues.
The Committee members continued to have concerns that our education system is not reaching the needs and expectations of our students as they work towards graduation and moving onto post secondary studies.
Members encouraged the Minister to continue his efforts to provide support to students, teachers and parents with regards to staying in school and acquiring the right number and the right kinds of credits to enable students to continue with their education as well as identifying opportunities for future learning in both the academic field and the trades field.
The Committee looks forward to future progress reports from the departmental committee that has been established to review these issues.
Mr. Chairman, Department of Education plays a key role in helping Nunavummiut work towards the objective of self-reliance.
The Committee recognizes that the administration of programs provided through income support is a factor in achieving that objective.
Therefore, Committee members were pleased to receive information about the department’s new information program for income support recipients as announced by the Minister earlier this week.
Members were somewhat disappointed not to see increased funding for library services which provide information, resources and programs for a number of interest groups from daycare classes to Grade 6 students, to students in adult learning programs.
The Committee strongly urges the Minister to explore any opportunities to increase funding and support for community-based library services.
Individual Members may also have questions and comments as we proceed.
Before we proceed, I would like to point out that according to Rule 77 (1) Members will have ten minutes to speak on general comments.
And 77 (2) indicates that the subject to the discretion of the Chairperson, a Member may speak more than once to the matter and the discussions that make until every Member that wishes to speak has spoken.
I will open the floor now to general comments. Mr. Havioyak.
I will make a short comment, as I am part of the Committee in regards to Education.
The Minister had talked about a little bit of what is in the budget in terms of the Education Budget in 2003-2004.
But I am pleased to say, I am happy to hear the comments from the Minister in terms of the DEA Budget, although it is quite small.
It is encouraging to hear from the Minister that he has not forgotten about the process of funding those groups at the Committee level.
And I am pleased to hear that.
On another subject, from what I am hearing in terms of the adult education, perhaps it was last year and perhaps this fall as well.
These were areas I was questioning in terms of the adult education programs and an area of more trades programs, for example in the mining industry and this is something I am strongly encouraging.
As we know there is a lot of students and as well, adults who are not employed.
So, this is an area in which I would like to see improve in terms of getting more support for trades for as well as the mining industry.
As we know, there are many people who are unemployed, for example, in my community in Kugluktuk, but on the other hand, there are more jobs coming out with BHP and other mining companies.
And this is where I would like to ask, how can we improve those areas for employment and continue to support the mining industry?
I want to encourage the Minister to keep that in mind to try to get training programs for the mining industry.
For your strategy, in terms of adult education, how effective is that?
I would like to hear more about it.
The strategy review will be done perhaps in the fall.
While you’re working on the review, I want to encourage you not to forget about the mining industry, continue working with the mining industry.
Last year, perhaps, as you remember, the Diavik mining company supported the residents in Kugluktuk in terms of training opportunities for jobs, so in those areas, I would like to encourage you to do more on that to find more trades opportunities for the residents.
As we know and we heard the other day, there are other areas in Nunavut where exploration is going on and these are encouraging for those who want to continue their education and perhaps get a trade down the line.
I also want to comment on the schools.
For example, in Kugluktuk, our Inuinnaqtut language is not being used as much as before.
We also have two writing systems in Innuinaqtut.
We want to keep in mind that we have students that are learning the new system, where they use Qs and Rs. These are being taught in the schools.
On the other hand, there are some students that have been raising questions about the new writing system.
They are not comfortable using the new writing system.
Mr. Minister, you and I have visited the school before.
These concerns of using the new writing system came up.
Keep our elders informed on the writing system.
Those are just some of my comments and I wanted to let you know that I will be raising questions on those issues.
Very briefly, there are few employment opportunities available in the communities and also there are trades programs that are not available in the communities.
If we had these trades programs taught in the communities it would definitely help in acquiring employment.
There are training opportunities out there that they can learn.
Country food is an example where they can learn trades in foods and other employment.
There are students who attend Nunavut Arctic College who are paid through income support for the students loans program and that isn’t nearly enough to cover the expenses that they have to pay for their family and children.
So, I would like for the Minister to consider the funding that the adults receive to attend school.
There is some people out there who are unilingual who are very qualified to train people in their traditional fields and I myself am not familiar with the programs that you have but I think it’s important that we provide income support for the students.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Alakannuaq.
I’m glad to have an opportunity to speak to the Minister and his staff.
I know there are some good things in the budget and there are some disappointing things in there as well and I think probably one of the biggest disappointments and concerns that I have echoed by the chair of the committee is that committee Members are concerned that education system is not meeting the needs of our students.
This is an issue that I’ve heard from students, I’ve heard from parents, that this is a concern of theirs and every time I know what they are supposed to do but when the Minister makes statements and announcements about how the departments and education is doing all the good things out there, what a wonderful system we have and I think that there needs to be an acknowledgement by the department that there are problems with our system and they need to take steps to try and identify and then solve those problems because until we do that, we’re not doing our young people any favours.
There are people out there saying that our system set their children up for failure before they even get started.
That’s not fair for them.
I had one individual who told me that in their community, ever since they had high school there, they’ve very rarely had anyone who could go right from grade 12 in Nunavut and get into a university down south.
There are even some diplomas issued by the Department of Education to grade 12 students that aren’t really accepted by our college.
They ask students to go and take upgrading or other programs or tests to make sure that they’re at the level required for some of the post secondary education offered by the college.
I think that the department has to get out of that ostrich mentality of saying what a wonderful system we have.
There is lots of good things about our system, don’t get me wrong.
But there are some serious problems with it too and as long as we continue to ignore those problems, we’re not going to solve them and we’re not doing the young people out there any favours either.
If we want to stop the revolving door of people who are coming up here to Nunavut from the south to fulfill top jobs within the government and other organizations, the only way to do that is to make sure that we have a quality education provided to our young people so that they can further their education in a post secondary level in universities or colleges in the south to be at the same level of education, same quality of education as any student in any jurisdictions in southern Canada.
I really think that this is something that the department has to acknowledge and face and say hey lot of it’s what we inherited, no one is blaming you guys but you’re not going to run away and make something better by ignoring it and I think that, you know, that really needs to be done.
It talks about our graduation levels are continuing to be steady as enrolments are up and like I said, I had received a copy of a letter from a student who had graduated and felt that her diploma was not good enough.
It was not good enough for her to go to post-secondary education in the South.
We have to find ways to stop that from happening.
It is nice to see in here that they have increased funding also for the District Education Authorities.
One of the promises made by departmental officials when we wanted to dissolve the Divisional Boards of Education and this was a flag that they waved to all of the District Education Authority’s as if they would get more control and authority over the education in their communities.
There is a lot of District Education Authority’s still waiting for that.
We have seen actions and Legislation before the House that seems to diminish the powers of the District Education Authority’s and things seem to be being sucked back into the bureaucracy.
And those are concerns that the District Education Authority’s have and I have this.
I really believe that when they said that that is what they were going to do and I am sure all of the District Education Authority’s feel the same way.
Again, the issue of forced growth, it says here enrolments are up, but I think this is the first budget address and the first Minister’s comments on a budget that does not say anything about new teaching positions.
I think that is an issue that needs to be dealt with.
Our teachers are out there doing the best they can with what they have to work with and I tip my hat to every single one of them.
But you can only do so much when they have overcrowded classrooms; it is the teachers who feel that they cannot do their job because there are just too many people in the classroom.
And also part of that is the attention that needs towards special needs students within the system that demand a lot more time and distract the teacher from doing their job for the rest of the students.
I would still love to see that they do and re-legislate class size and give our teachers something that they can actually work and feel like they are doing what they want to do in the classrooms.
Sometimes and not all of the times, but sometimes they feel like they are just maintaining control and you know, I do not think that that is proper either.
I think we need to make sure that they are happy in their work environment, that they can feel like they are accomplishing their job adequately.
Another thing mentioned in here and I can assume from the wording that says that including school operations for this money being increased here to maintain at acceptable levels.
Basically, I look forward to asking questions on that, but it is just the status quo and every year, I think now as they are saying, we need more than the status quo.
Education is supposed to be one of the top two priorities of this government and it would be nice to see more put into it.
One of the other things that I look forward to questioning the Ministers on is the $2 million set aside for language of instruction as for curriculum development.
Is there enough for curriculum development?
Or is it just a token amount to get started or is it supplementing additional work that has already been in process?
We need to develop a curriculum in Inuktitut then in English that is going to be at the same level as the English curriculum.
Students should be able to go back and forth from one to the other without a difference.
That’s not the case today.
The two other things that I would like to mention, Mr. Chairman, before my time runs out, is the increased support for FANS.
It’s great that there’s an increase in there but the fact that it’s beneficiaries only, it would have been nice to see something that was in there for all the students in Nunavut.
This is a public government, so that would have been nice to see.
Also, student housing, especially here in Iqaluit, there’s a shortage of student housing.
We heard last year about a student who had to go back to her home community because she didn’t have a place to live.
There were no married accommodations for her and her family.
I know there’s a student out there with a family of nine that doesn’t have a place to live, so this is an area that needs to be looked at and addressed in the future.
My times up so, I’ll stop there for now.
At this time I will ask Mr. Iqaqrialu to speak for ten minutes.
The Minister of the Department of Education’s job, I recognize that it’s a very hard job to do.
I would like to say that, as people of Nunavut, our language and our culture cannot be left behind.
I heard one of the Members saying a little while ago, never mind the culture and our language.
I would like to say that we have to retain our language and culture because it’s part of our lives.
The people of Nunavut don’t have a school in Nunavut that caters only to our language and our culture.
What we have is a school system that is in English and French and the curriculum is already developed.
The problem I feel in the education system is they’re not exactly sure where their culture is at the present time.
That’s probably why the students are not up to par with the education system in Nunavut.
I really appreciate the people who work for the Department of Education and I would support them with the work that they are trying to do.
That is the reason why I talk about the education system, to run smoother in the Government of Nunavut.
Nobody has thought of our culture and language.
That’s probably the reason why the students are not learning our culture as much as they should be.
The people of Nunavut should try to acquire a school that only caters to our culture and language and also to continue with the regular classroom activities like they are doing at this present time.
If it’s only going to be academic our culture and language will probably be lost and that is the reason for this recommendation.
If we want both the Inuktitut and the English curriculum applicable and if this legislation is to be properly taught at an acceptable level, then we will have to pay for both the present education system and in the future, perhaps establish a school in the Inuit way teaching Inuit culture and language.
There would be less strife in the educational arena if all languages are taught in each specific language at a particular funded school.
I know that it would be very expensive but it has to be implemented.
We conducted a fact finding mission to Greenland and I was very impressed because their language is the primary language and culture is very important in the school system and once they have completed their secondary education then they are able to take on post-secondary courses in other languages, European languages.
They feel that it is very important for the people of Greenland to learn their culture and language first before they take on other fields.
Their curriculum is geared towards their culture, language and their island.
They are in a better position because they are not losing their language and their culture.
There are many people who work in Greenland and they use only their language in the government system and we can attain that as well here in Nunavut by providing our students with relevant language and culture courses before they are taught in other ways.
In this present reality, English and French are more prominent in our school system in Nunavut then our own Inuktitut culture and language.
We will continue to lose our culture, our language and our young people unless we promote Inuit language, culture, history and geography in our own curriculum.
I know that would require a lot of new funding allocations for teaching Inuit culture but we will have to ensure that the entire scope of Inuit life is provided adequately.
Education already compromises a large portion of our operational budget, but we will have to ensure that what made us Inuit is also taught in our schools.
I taught school children for 7 years in my community, between the ages of 6 and 7 and I taught them the traditional values and ways of our ancestors and it was such a heart moving experience because there are a lot of students who would like to be taught their Inuit culture and our language.
However, there is nothing substantive nor relevant being taught by the Department of Education about Nunavut.