Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The wish of the committee today is to deal with the sessional statement in Committee of the Whole today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

…abandoned light fixtures. Let’s take them down. That is not big ticket stuff. Can we maintain the school, at least?

Mr. Speaker, my question is, do we have enough staff and enough resources in Hay River to try and maintain this building so that it does not deteriorate further and fall into further disrepair? If we’re going to do a retrofit on it, wouldn’t it make sense to try and stop damage from getting worse, from deterioration occurring? I mean, that’s kind of how I think. We’re supposed to be stewards of these resources that we have. That would make sense. Take the hospital, for example. They have a dedicated maintenance staff. There’s at least three or four people at the hospital who are dedicated to...

Mr. Speaker, if I owned a building that had code deficiencies like those listed in this report, somebody who is an inspector in the government would be all over me. Who can I call to report the disrepair and the code deficiencies in this school? To whom shall I report it if it is a government building? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have a way of assessing our priorities when it comes to capital planning in this government. It is the protection of people and the protection of assets. I would like to suggest that the people are not being well served by this building. I would suggest that this is an unhealthy building to go to school in and to work in. The asset is not being protected either, because it is being allowed to go further and further into disrepair. There are some basic, not-too-costly things that could be done to at least maintain the school until a major retrofit...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have in my hand again today the technical evaluation of the Diamond Jenness Secondary School in Hay River and I could stand up here and make a nice speech and list off all the things that are wrong with that school but, you know, I am sick and tired of talking about the substandard school that we have in Hay River. There are so many things in this report that would indicate that we are expecting our teachers to work in a substandard building, we are expecting our students to be educated in a substandard building, and this is a shame. This should not be...

I’m sorry. You were going to ask if we consider this matter concluded first. Sorry. Yes. I just wanted to make a motion to report progress, but you finish what you were doing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The sessional statement is the first time we’ve had a bit of chance to hear what the Premier’s vision is for the territory -- and the Cabinet’s vision, I would assume -- since Mr. Roland’s election as our new Premier for the 16th Assembly. I can’t help but be struck by the consistency with this statement starting off, as now being here for the fourth term, as the similarities that we come across from term to term to term. I guess one of the things that I would like to see…We’ve all come here to do a job and we want to make a difference and we talk about those...

Mr. Speaker, my point is that if we take care of the minor things, the major retrofit will be less of a challenge. Would the Minister of Public Works and Services commit to forming a working group between perhaps the MLAs, the local school authority, somebody from Education, to take a look at this facility and see what kinds of things that we could identify that we could do now while we’re waiting to get a major retrofit done? Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know a little bit about building maintenance and let me tell you, some of the pictures in the review there, there is a penetration through the wall in the boiler room where pipes and where holes are that haven’t been filled and there’s nothing in the hole anymore. It’s just a breach of the firewall in the boiler room. Surely for the price of drywall and something to seal around a pipe we could do a little preventative maintenance, fill that in, so if there was a fire in the boiler room it wouldn’t spread to the whole school and burn it down. Those are the kind...