Wendy Bisaro

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the commitment for the full picture and I guess I have a difficult time understanding why we don’t already have the full picture when we are using some of this THSSI funding in this particular fiscal year.

Lastly, Mr. Speaker, I’d like to ask the Minister if she will commit to meet with the Yellowknife Association of Community Living to hear their concerns, to understand why it is they are so upset about the cancellation of this programming. Will she do that and when? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Minister for the commitment to bring us forward a plan. That is certainly something committee has been asking for, for quite a while. But there is still a huge confusion around this issue. The Minister has been telling me, through my inquiries, that there is no change to the respite programs for the next fiscal year. Yet, Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority has cut all funding for a program that presumably is continuing in 2011-12. I need to ask the Minister why am I getting different answers. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to express my very grave concerns with a recent action by the Department of Health and Social Services also referenced by Mr. Abernethy. It’s over the cancellation of the respite care program run by the Yellowknife Association for Community Living, a local NGO.

The respite program provides much needed relief to 29 families in Yellowknife. Some of these families have moved to Yellowknife from other NWT communities to access services available here; services like specialized health care and the respite program.

What began as a very small pilot project in 2003...

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 have to say to the Premier’s offer to measure, absolutely we must measure where we are. Much of that work was done during the Anti-Poverty Summit and that work cannot proceed if we don’t involve everybody who is currently involved in anti-poverty actions, whether it be territorial government programs or non-government groups that are working to help people out in the trenches, so to speak.

So I guess I would like to ask the Premier again if he will reconsider this working group and reconsider expanding it to include the key stakeholders at the outset, not in an...