IQALUIT
Faced with one third of Nunavummiut under the age of 15, the government is investing to make sure they finish high school, go to college, and have the option to get a home-grown degree.

Department of Finance deputy minister Chris D'Arcy and Finance Minister Keith Peterson respond to media questions ahead of Peterson's presentation of the budget to legislators Feb. 25. - Casey Lessard/NNSL photo

Finance Minister Keith Peterson presented a budget Feb. 25 that will see the Department of Education get 10 per cent more and Nunavut Arctic College five per cent more to bring their annual budget to more than one-quarter of a billion dollars.

"Getting a job or running a business is difficult without a high school diploma," Peterson told legislators. "Advancing into middle and senior management is difficult without college or university. Today, one adult Inuk in 50 has a university degree. Two in five Inuit have a high school diploma. If we are to take control of our future, these numbers have to rise."

To help improve literacy, a building block for education, the government is hiring 43 new literacy-learning coaches, one for each school in Nunavut.

"One of the biggest contributing factors to lower graduation rates in school throughout the years is literacy issues," said Department of Education assistant deputy minister John MacDonald. "Each one of those individuals will be a teacher, but their purpose is to support literacy instruction in the school, to provide assistance and model instructional techniques to other teachers."

Meanwhile, Nunavut Arctic College is looking at building its products, specifically with an eye to become a degree-granting university college within five years.

"Cost-wise, I think it will (be of benefit) because we're paying very expensive costs to the two universities," said bursar Marcelo Parungo, noting locally hired professors can also reduce long-term costs.

Start-up costs would be high because the college would have to either develop its own curriculum or buy one from another university for the two degree programs -- teacher education and nursing.

Creating skilled labour is critical to Nunavut's future, but then you need to be able to house them, and that's a problem in Nunavut.

"Supply is an issue," said Department of Education deputy minister Chris D'Arcy. "In order to hire someone, we have to be able to house them somewhere. We know that housing supply in the capital in particular is severely limited until the next subdivision goes ahead. That's going to be a couple of years. But in the communities as well, there continues to be housing challenges."

To ease that problem, Peterson is dedicating most of the 2014-15 end-of-year surplus to staff housing.

"If you have a surplus, as we project this year, you can take $20 million and put that into staff housing," he said. "We're going to give that to the Nunavut Housing Corporation and ask them to go build staff housing across Nunavut. So that helps us and it's going to help Nunavummiut."

Government employees aren't the only ones struggling with housing, and that's an understatement. One third of existing homes are overcrowded, Peterson said in the budget address, and housing corporation tells him about one in four needs major repairs.

"Meeting this demand would greatly improve our social and economic situation," Peterson said, calling on the federal government to increase its investments in housing.

Health, a top priority for the government, is getting six per cent more money this year, with mental health and addictions programming getting a 35 per cent boost, bringing the budget to $20 million. The government will also update the Public Health Act, which hasn't seen an update for 60 years, Peterson said.

Overall, there is more money being passed around, because federal transfers increase and the government brings in more of its own revenue through income and payroll taxes.

"There's more people in the wage economy, more people making money, more people making more money, and because of that, we're seeing increases in the taxes," D'Arcy said.

But anything can happen, as Alberta is learning with the collapse of oil prices.

"Any time you're a territory that has a lot of resources in the ground, global prices are a concern for us," Peterson said. "We'd obviously like to see more private sector employment with the mines and others in the private sector."

It's Peterson's fourth straight balanced budget, this year with a surplus of $22.8 million.

"I've always been a person who likes to save money for a rainy day," he said. "If you don't have money, you don't have options to do good things for the territory. We've got some money, so it's great."