R.J. Simpson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And as I said earlier, we're not going to have a school in place for this upcoming school year.

I can say that, you know, there are some roadblocks with the Education Act with the way all the districts are drawn, and so I know the Member has stated that hamlet doesn't want to work with or to have the Hay River involved but I think the Hay River DEA does need to be involved at this point. That's probably the easiest way to get things done. I've had meetings with representatives from Enterprise and the DEA, and there was discussions about perhaps starting small, having a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, we can't have a I can't commit to having a school in place by September. Schools need to be constructed or space would need to be renovated. There would need to be amendments to likely the Education Act. There's too much work to be done to have a school in place by September.

That being said, I have met with representatives from Enterprise, and I'm happy to continue to meet with them and have discussions as well as with the Hay River DEA, who are also involved in those discussions. Thank you.

Thank you. To my right, I have Andrea Giesbrecht, director of labour, development, and standards. It's her second appearance in front of committee. And on my left, Stephen Flanagan, legislative division with the Department of Justice, and it is his first time appearing in Committee of the Whole. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And we have the Mackenzie Mountains. There's Mackenzie Islands, Mackenzie Island, another Mackenzie Island. And they're all named after different people. So we have quite a few different features in the territory. We are 1.3 million square kilometres after all, and we can't do everything at once. So we are not in the process of actively pursuing community support for changing names because that has to come from the community. If that came from the community, we would be happy to do that as per the policy.

And I will point out there are over 400 Indigenous names that the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I want to commend the Member for the strong antislavery stance he took in his Member's statement.

The GNWT isn't the one who puts forward name changes for a geographical place. We have a geographical name policy, and it states that those changes come from the community. So we actually have received a request from the community to change the name of the Great Slave Lake.

We work with the Geographic Names Board of Canada on that, and there is a process. It involves community consultation, consultation with Indigenous governments, and we are undertaking that now. So the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Without a heads up, no, I can't detail the type of deescalation training that RCMP officers receive but the Commissioner of the RCMP did receive a new mandate letter today from the Minister of Public Safety and in there, there was comments about reviewing that type of deescalation training, to make sure that it is actually appropriate and doing what it is supposed to be doing. But I will provide the Member with a written followup regarding deescalation training. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So here in the Northwest Territories, the Dene Nation and the RCMP have begun working together. They started a pilot project, close to a year ago now I believe, and it's a one year pilot. But that is an effort for some Indigenous leaders, as well as RCMP members, to come together and work together to address some of these issues that the Member is talking about.

The federal government, the Prime Minister, and the Minister of Public Safety, have tasked the RCMP to accelerate their reform with a focus on the MMIWG Calls for Justice as well as the TRC's Calls to Action. I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to speak about our progress in establishing a polytechnic university in the Northwest Territories. The magnitude of this project was never something to be taken lightly, and we remain committed to completing work in the right order and at the right time.

The transformation follows a threephased approach that ensures Aurora College can build a strong foundation so that it transforms into a sustainable polytechnic university that delivers high quality education to Northerners.

We are already seeing gains as we establish the building...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And if the Member doesn't like the "Mackenzie River," he can use any of the other six official names. The Mackenzie River, in 2015, wasn't renamed per se but there were names added to it. So a single geographical feature can have multiple names, and they are all official, each one as official as the next. And so the Mackenzie River does have a number of official names. Can be used in official documents. So that work has already happened. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We can do what we want with government owned infrastructure when it comes to naming. We don't have to ask anyone's permission. We pay the bills, we can name buildings what we want to name them.

Any change in name would be tied to some sort of a retrofit of the building, some other changes. There are plans to look at how we can perhaps fund the museum differently. We're working on a revenue study. We expect some renovations, which are required for the building and so any changes would be part and parcel of that. But I foresee that in the not too distant future we'll...