R.J. Simpson

The money spent on court proceedings pursuant to the 2016 directive is $220,000.

One of the things about this job is there is a lot. There is a lot in ECE. This is something I have an interest in, a personal interest, but I haven't gotten to the level of detail, yet, that I would like to. I appreciate the Member bringing this up. It is going to spur me and my department to look further into this. As for those resources, I will look into that.

I want to say, too, that, in the last Assembly, whenever we had a youth parliament or whenever I engaged with the youth, this was one of the biggest issues they spoke about, the mental health crisis among our youth. We are aware...

I will definitely look into that. We had a conversation about this yesterday. It is a very real issue that students are facing. They become counsellors, peer counsellors, who are dealing with heavy, heavy issues. That weighs on someone. People internalize that, and that becomes an issue for them. I am committed to looking into this.

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order under Rule 24 (h), making allegations against another Member, a House Officer, a witness, or a member of the public; (i) imputes false or hidden motives to another Member; (j) charges another Member with uttering a deliberate falsehood; and/or (k) uses abusive or insulting language of a nature likely to create disorder. I have waited until today to raise this point of order because I wanted to review Hansard.

Yesterday, during Members' Statements, the Member for Monfwi said while speaking of the Honourable Premier, and I quote from page 14 of the unedited...

Right now, we are in the phase where we are strengthening the foundation of the college, so that type of work, while there have been conversations, we have not aggressively been pursuing that, just because of where we are and that we do not have a regional needs assessment done to know what we are going to look like. We do not have our infrastructure assessment done. It is hard to go out and ask for money for a particular project when we do not have a particular project that we can show. That being said, there are the conversations that the Premier had in her former post, and there are other...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes. That is what we currently believe. However, I have told the House before and the committees before that this isn't necessarily about getting it done as quickly as possible so we can check boxes. It is about doing it right, and if things need to be pushed back by a season because we are not ready to start a capital project or something like that, or the legislation isn't where it should be, and committee might need more time to look at the legislation, I am willing to make those adjustments to timelines, but as it stands, a lot of work has gone into creating a...

Thank you, Madam Chair, and the Premier is absolutely correct that it is too early to say what we are going to be doing at the polytechnic university, but one thing about universities is that they are willing to put on programming. If the government has money and it wants to fund a program that would help increase healthcare professionals, that is something the college would probably gladly do. Those are the kind of opportunities we will have going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There was a lot in that eight minutes there, so I will respond to what I can. The Northern Distance Learning, the Member mentioned evaluations. We just had an Office of the Auditor General of Canada report that evaluated that program; they said it is great. We just had our five-year report on ERI; there are so many acronyms, I can never recall the name when I need to, but that showed success. I have testimonials from students, so that program is doing well. We are keeping an eye on it, and it is one of the bright spots when it comes to education.

The Member said we are...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The university, as I see it, will be stretched across the entire territory, and I have a vision of it being in 33 communities. We do not need buildings physically right next to each other to call it a campus. Everywhere the university has a presence is part of that university. The model of a main campus is an outdated model. It is not something that I am focusing on in this Assembly. I was just down in Smith. They have a beautiful campus down there. It is huge. We need to fill it up. We have a campus here that needs some work, so we are going to have to do something...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will go back to the Member's first question. We don't have big asks out to the federal government right now, because we haven't done the infrastructure assessment. We have a good idea of what we might need, but you need better than an idea before you go asking for money. The work to determine what infrastructure we are going to need will be done later this year.

The second question that you just asked was about timelines. As I have said before, we are looking at 2022 for a return to a board of governors. The senate would be some time thereafter, and what that senate...