Official Languages Committee on Feb. 9th, 2011

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I was coming to that.

Do you have taxing power?

[Suzette Montreuil]

No.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

So, you depend solely on transfers from the NWT government. Does the federal government send you money directly or does it go through the territorial government?

[Suzette Montreuil]

It goes through the territorial government.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

In that case, you are completely dependent on funding transfers. You have no taxing power.

[Suzette Montreuil]

That's correct.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

We saw that you may secure the power to establish policies. That is before the courts.

[Suzette Montreuil]

Yes.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Are there other policies, other than the one relating to admissions, that are at stake?

[Suzette Montreuil]

No other case is currently before the court. It is mainly the one dealing with the admissions policy.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Have you already claimed the power to set other policies?

[Suzette Montreuil]

We have the right to establish all our other policies. I don't really understand the question.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Well, I am talking about policies with respect to hiring, firing, setting the curriculum, and so on.

[Philippe Brûlot]

Yes. As you know, the legislation is within territorial jurisdiction. As long as we abide by the process and procedures, we are free to do that. It has to be within the parameters of local legislation.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Do you agree with those parameters?

[Suzette Montreuil]

Employees are governed by the collective agreement, which does not only apply only to our school board.

Taking responsibility for all of that represents a lot of work for a school board of our size. That's why we prefer not to do it. We primarily want to have control over the right to admit students to our schools.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Can you tell me whether you have submitted an application? If so, I am not going to ask you what the result was.

Have you applied for assistance under the Court Challenges Program which was reinstated?

[Suzette Montreuil]

Yes.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

So, you did apply.

[Suzette Montreuil]

Yes, and we were successful.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I wasn't expecting as much.

With respect to educational television, do you have any agreements with educational television networks?

[Suzette Montreuil]

We have just recently secured a system. Next year, we are planning to try and do something for our two high schools. The system existed previously, but it wasn't really used. It came about thanks to the health care system.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Are you expecting to enter into agreements with educational television networks from elsewhere—Ontario, for example, Quebec or even the Maritimes?

[Philippe Brûlot]

We are actually looking at that whole issue right now. There are obviously costs associated with that. When you have limited budgets, particularly because of a court case that is costing us a fortune, that limits our ability to provide opportunities such as the one you describe.

[Suzette Montreuil]

I would just like to add as well that schools throughout the Northwest Territories basically use the Alberta curriculum. So, that would be the first place we would look. There are specifications, such as a language study program which comes from us. Other than that, we really base ourselves on the Alberta curriculum. In Western Canada, the provinces are currently pooling their efforts to develop more similar curricula.