Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Mr. Chair. In the interest of moving this forward, I'll meet with the Minister. I'm prepared to meet with him anytime. But I continue to get communications from constituents. We got a letter most recently from APADY dated October 12th complaining about how they're not involved in the submission that's already gone in. I'm happy to meet with the Minister, but clearly this is not going in the collaborative fashion that our government should be moving forward on. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Can I just get a commitment then out of the Minister to provide that figure to me for what the resource centre renovations are going to cost? Can he just provide that to me? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'm glad to hear that the proposal will finally be shared with the folks that took us to court. Look, I don't want to delay construction of this, nobody wants to delay construction of this, but we have an opportunity to get more money to do it right from the beginning, I mean maybe even save us some money. All I'm asking is the Minister willing to meet? My colleague had the same discussion on the floor of the House earlier and I'm prepared to go that route, but is the Minister prepared to commit to have a meeting like that soon so that everybody's on the same page in terms...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'm just wondering if the Minister can tell us whether this funding is for the legendary law resource centre that the department was building? Is that what this money is for?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've been listening carefully to what the Minister and his staff have said about getting federal support for schools, and that's important, and collaboration and so on. But I want to continue to try to engage him on Ecole Allain St-Cyr expansion. This schools in my riding. I'm getting an enormous amount of complaints about the inability to work with the department in a collaborative fashion. People are stopping me in the streets, I'm getting phone calls, e-mails. Most recently I had somebody stop me on the ice while I'm playing hockey to complain about this. So something...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So, yes, I guess I'm looking for a clear commitment from the Minister that he's going to provide to Regular MLAs utilization rates of the facility so that we can understand whether it was overbuilt or not as it goes into use. So could he commit to some sort of at least annual reporting of utilization rate of the facility once it starts to be used? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Look, I don't want to drag this out any longer than I have to, but I have one other point that I want to pursue. As I understand it, the court order required the new gymnasium and two special needs spaces. It's the GNWT that's actually decided to work collaboratively with the francophone community to add two additional classrooms that are above and beyond the court order.

So I think I heard the Minister say that we're going to just do the basics. That's not true. What I know is that this has actually gone above and beyond what's in the court order. Going to Heritage Canada...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess we don't seem to have a very good track record for building correctional facilities in the Northwest Territories. We have a youth facility here that's not used, the one in Inuvik was closed. I'm just wondering what sort of assurance the department can give to me and the public that we're doing the right thing with this facility and it's been designed for the right capacity of folks and that we're heading in the right direction. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So, as I understand it then, a copy of the proposal was not shared with APADY or CSFTNO and still hasn't today. So I'm just wondering why there seems to be some systemic problem with this department working collaboratively with CSFTNO and APADY. I don't understand why the department cannot work collaboratively with these two organizations in something as simple as putting together a proposal that would go to Heritage Canada. That would actually save us money so that we wouldn't have to put all the money into the expansion ourselves. So what is the problem with the department...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad to hear that the Minister does intend to respond to the letter from CSFTNO. But if I heard him correct, I think he said that he's not willing to reopen the directive. That would be extremely unfortunate, Mr. Speaker.

So I just wonder then, how does the Minister propose to develop a better working relationship with APADY and CSFTNO for French first language education in the NWT so we don't end up back in the courts? That's what we all want to avoid. So I think the community's pleading for some flexibility to get us more towards what they have in the Yukon. Can the...