Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to address my questions today to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to follow up on my statement where I talked about the amendments to the Education Act. I stated in my statement that the issue of bullying and cyber-bullying is not just an issue that belongs within the Education department or within our schools. It is a societal issue.

I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not – albeit I’m glad that we have these amendments going forward – the Minister and or other departments within the government are considering plans for...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise this afternoon on a point of privilege. I would like to speak to a point of privilege from a quote by Mr. Menicoche on Friday, October 18th. I did wait for this opportunity to bring the point up. I wanted to check unedited Hansard. I will quote from unedited Hansard, page 35 from Friday, October 18th. Mr. Menicoche says, “Thank you very much, Madam Chair. The media was quick up that in the capital plan there’s nothing for Yellowknife, and I’m glad.” Laughter.

I think the Hansard crew may have missed out a couple of words. I think it should say, “The media was...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, it answers the question. It is a definite maybe, I think is what I heard. I guess it concerns me that again we have projects in this capital budget which really are suggesting that we are going to have school additions or renovations, not in 2014-15 but maybe the year after, but it doesn’t sound like that is very feasible. With the amount of work that is required to do once the planning study is done, unless it is done early on in the fiscal year, there is no way that the project is going to get through the capital plan. It also has to be a high priority in the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have to respectfully disagree with the comments from my colleague to my left. The campus here in Yellowknife is full and it is full to overflowing. It has been in need of some kind of an examination of the situation for probably five years, maybe 10 years now. Several years ago, when the lease was up for Northern United Place, where Aurora College Yellowknife Campus is now located, I believe I remember hearing the Minister say that, well, this is just going to be for a short time, we were going to do a planning study and we were going to look at building a facility to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We would like to continue with our consideration of Tabled Document 107-17(4), NWT Capital Estimates 2014-2015, and we would like to start with the Department of Education, and Transportation, time willing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Giant Mine site is an historic part of Yellowknife and the NWT, but it is a blight on our landscape, and worse, it is the biggest environmental liability in this country, one which we may have in this community forever, for eternity. I have trouble even contemplating that. One hundred years is an amount of time I can rationalize, even several hundred years, but forever? That’s beyond comprehension for most of us and certainly for me.

The federal government has assumed responsibility for the remediation of the Giant Mine site, but we, the GNWT, have also assumed some...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for his response. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear in there that we have plans for a territorial-wide campaign to educate not just the schools but the people outside the schools, parents, people in the workplace and so on.

I would like to ask the Minister, he says that there is a communications plan being developed, he talked about a couple of other things that are being developed, I would like to know from the Minister when we can see this communications plan or awareness plan or whatever it is going to be. When are we going to see that rolling out...

Thanks to the Minister. I didn’t hear an answer to my question there, except I think it was a no. But the Minister said that the amendments that have been developed are dealing with stuff that falls within his department, but I’m sure that this issue was discussed at Cabinet before the amendments were brought forward. So I still put the question out there: How is this government going to address workplace bullying, because it does exist there, and how is this government going to address bullying that happens outside of our schools?

One of the things that is quite evident when you look at the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government Department of Education, Culture and Employment has brought forward amendments to the Education Act, in response to a motion passed by this House almost two years ago, February of 2012. I’m very pleased that the government took notice of the request from Regular Members and subsequently took action to bring legislation forward. I do have concerns, however, with the legislation that’s presented.

Bullying is an issue throughout our society. It is not confined to our education system and our schools. As stated by an expert on bullying from Simon Fraser...

That’s fine. Thanks, Mr. Chair.