R.J. Simpson

In favour.

Abstain.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So currently there is nothing on the books to build a new permanent facility at Ecole Boreale. As the MLA, I advocated for, you know, that in the past, advocated for a gym, advocating for all of these issues as the Member is doing now. Unfortunately, there was a decision made, you know, 15 years ago that we are now dealing with. It would have been great if they had just built a permanent building at that point. But now we're at the point where we have many schools that are in need of repair. There's 49 schools in the territory, you know, over 50 years old some of them...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I agree, students need a place to learn that is supportive of that learning. And in a supportive learning environment, staff need a safe supportive workplace as well. And so as soon as we learned about this, we started working with the Department of Infrastructure, and there will be a permanent fix in place over the summer. So in the next school year, it will no longer be an issue. It would be great if we could fix this issue before the summer, fix it now, but it's a very disruptive process. I believe it involves digging up the parking lot and, you know, the smell...

Mr. Speaker, as another school year comes to a close for students across the Northwest Territories, I would like to recognize this year’s graduates. Whether they are graduating from kindergarten, high school, or a postsecondary institution like Aurora College, the territory’s graduates have a lot to be proud of.

Applause

The pandemic has created unprecedented disruptions in every sector of society. The last two years have posed great challenges for residents, with the impacts of COVID19 taking an emotional, mental and physical toll on the health and wellbeing of NWT residents, communities...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No additional resources are needed. We are making our way through hundreds of names, as I mentioned. And we are fully staffed. I know that the Government of Nunavut has had some staffing issues with that toponymist position, but luckily we've been able to maintain staff and are making our way through that.

We do have a geographical and community names policy of the Executive Council, and that guides how communities and geographical features are renamed. And I don't think that there's any sort of, you know, policy adjustments required, any sort of additional resources...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can't bind future governments but I'm confident that we will see a name change in the Member's lifetime. I wish the Member a very long life. But the plan has been to as the Member knows, we are working to address some of the infrastructure issues at the museum, some type of retrofit, perhaps a new governance model, and tied in with that would be a name change. Instead of just slapping a new name on an old building, we want to package it all together so it is a new there's a sense of renewal associated with it so it's not just we're doing it for the sake of doing it...

Abstain.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is part of the RCMP training. As well, Gdivision, the RCMP in the Northwest Territories, have requirements for new members to engage with the community once they become part of that community, to meet with elders, to participate in community events. And there's a number of other things that a number of other things that happen in the territory in response to the MMIWG and TRC that the department is the lead on, not necessarily the RCMP. The community safety officer pilot project, the there are community justice programs which we've had for a number of decades now...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, again, these are all very operational. I don't want to give partial answers. The Member's very good at soliciting information from Ministers through written questions and through these very complex oral questions. And so what I'm going to have to do is provide a written response once again. Thank you.