Wendy Bisaro

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that it is going to be discussed with YK1, but I really don’t understand how solving the issue of a lockdown can be accomplished when you have no doors on classrooms. It really, to me, is not a safety issue that can be accommodated. If it is a bomb issue, you could move the kids out of the school, but if it is an issue of a gunman in the school, you can’t move them out. It is a safety issue.

I guess I just want to stress to the Minister and to the department that Sissons should be higher on the priority list than it seems to be. I would certainly hope to see it in...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll try not to do such a long preamble since I kind of did it once already. I’m referencing a couple of schools in Yellowknife, particularly Mildred Hall School and J.H. Sissons School. Mildred Hall has fairly recently had a renovation but it wasn’t all completed. Sissons is long overdue. Well, I shouldn’t say overdue, but certainly due for a renovation, and I believe it was a priority on the department’s list for renovations as much as six or eight months ago. I’m dismayed to see that neither of these two schools have any... There are no plans in the capital budget...

I appreciate that it will be into the next year’s capital plan, but that’s fiscal year 2012-13 and if the Aurora College lease expires in 2012, that is going to be a pretty tight squeeze to get any kind of a facility ready for Aurora College in the year 2012 when that’s the capital budget year. But I will leave it at that in terms of the timing.

I am particularly concerned with two schools in Yellowknife: Mildred Hall School and J.H. Sissons School. Mildred Hall has recently had a renovation, but there was a portion of that renovation which did not get done due to a lack of funds, from what I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Thursday, October 21, 2010, I will move the following motion: I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South, that notwithstanding Rule 4, when this House adjourns on Thursday, October 21, 2010, it shall be adjourned until Monday, October 25, 2010;

And further, that any time prior to October 25, 2010, if the Speaker is satisfied, after consultation with the Executive Council and Members of the Legislative Assembly, that the public interest requires that the House should meet at an earlier time during the adjournment, the Speaker may...

I do agree with the Minister that it is important to discuss this, but I’m having a very difficult time. I believe this is a matter of poor communication or lack of communication. It would seem to me that this funding is coming from the department to the Health and Social Services Authority in Yellowknife and then to the programs that they happen to be running. I don’t understand why the specifics of the federal funding would change from the year ‘10-11 to the year ‘11-12, and that’s what I hear the Minister saying.

She also mentioned that, you know, a transitioning is not to be used for ways...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on the questions of my colleague Mr. Abernethy and direct them to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I am really confused even more so than I was prior to our statements. In an effort to bring some clarity to this issue and the funding for this program, I want to know from the Minister how we can have information from the Department of Health and Social Services which tells me that funding for this program in 2010-11 will be continued and next year into 2011-12, and that there will also be an increase in that programming. I would like to...

Mr. Chairman, I will talk about Mildred Hall first. I appreciate and I am thankful to hear that Mildred Hall is going to be considered at some point in time. I look at the capital needs assessment that we received a little while ago and note that there is no money indicated for Mildred Hall until the fiscal year 2013-14, which is a fairly long time down the road. I would hope that the finishing of those renovations is going to be before that.

With regards to Sissons, the Minister mentioned a technical study was just recently completed and did an analysis of one of the things he mentioned was...

My apologies, Mr. Chair. I got caught up in the moment. It’s a facility plan for all of Yellowknife, so I will keep my question until later. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I did make some comments on the opening of the capital budget. I made some comments about education. I am particularly concerned that the Education, Culture and Employment capital plan doesn’t include any projects for the city of Yellowknife. We have a number of schools within the city that were on the plan last year. When we reviewed capital last year, there was some indication that a couple of schools would be on the plan for this year and they are no longer.

When you look at the capital plan, there are really only two major capital projects in the ECE plan this year...

Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat dismayed by the Premier’s answer, because I think what the summit said was that we need to not just have the work done by GNWT people at the outset, that we need to involve everybody at the outset or else we are not going to get meaningful input or analysis of what we currently do.

As well, during the summit, in terms of the work that needed to be done, it was stated that we needed to start to work from the ground up, not look at what is existing but basically start with a clean slate, a zero-based review, so to speak. I would like to ask the Premier what kind of work...