Robert Hawkins

There is no student rep on this Board of Governors. I’ve gone to other websites of other universities and other colleges, and they all have an accessible porthole on how to get a hold of the Board of Governors. It may not be a direct e-mail but it’s one that goes to them. Why in this day and age, don’t we have this?

I will ask this question: How does the Minister define accountability and accessibility to their students, because I have yet to hear it today.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions, of course, will be directed to the Minister of Education.

Noting the fact that letters and e-mails are vetted through the Aurora College president’s office, which should be a concern just in itself, with also noting that the student rep on the Board of Governors is still waiting Cabinet approval, from my understanding, and furthermore that the student rep’s appointment only lasts a single year and by the time that the Cabinet gets to this perennial appointment it’s half over anyway, this makes it challenging for them to participate in the Board of Governors...

I appreciate the quick response from the Premier and his willingness to address this. I would certainly hope that I’d get a response back and that he’d have this tabled within we’ll say 10 days. That seems reasonable, because I’ve had people inquire about this at my office.

My last question would be is that under the report respecting benefits paid to Ministers under the Ministerial Benefits Policy, reviewing old tablings, which goes up to March 31, 2011, not all information is there. For some reason there’s information highlighted out, and what I may point out are things like hospitality where...

Mr. Speaker, defining accessibility by bumping into your Board of Governors representative at the Northern in Inuvik is not accountability. Going to the Co-op in Yellowknife and bumping into your Board of Governors rep is not accountability, and certainly going to the hardware store in Fort Smith is not defined as accountability.

Will the Minister, under Section 7 of the Aurora College Act, use his authority and direct the college to meet with these students at least once a term so people can hear directly their issues and they can understand them, because right now I’ve heard zero today about...

Clearly, the question was missed, so I will reword it.

I did not hear one element that demonstrates how these Board of Governors are representing the students in an accessible and certainly in a transparent, accountable way.

In the same vein, will the Minister use his authority under Section 7 of the Aurora College Act, and instruct the college to get these Board of Governors’ e-mail addresses so the students can contact them, and furthermore, would he instruct the Board of Governors to meet with these students as a board to hear their concerns?

Mr. Speaker, a few short weeks ago, a number of MLAs went to the Yellowknife Aurora College campus, and we were there to hear from the students. As we expected, we heard a number of various concerns, and if I might rightly put them in different categories, I would call some of them city issues, ECE issues, and certainly Aurora College-specific issues.

While listening to these concerns it came to me: Has the college ever undertaken an opportunity to listen and certainly meet these students? So I posed the question, has anyone met their Board of Governors to talk about their concerns? Not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to be speaking on the Deh Cho Bridge and the need for an independent audit and a process regarding a number of the problems.

All I can say is, if FDR was alive today, I’m sure he would describe the Deh Cho Bridge as this: The Deh Cho Bridge is a project that will live in infamy. Why? Because it has been cursed with problems. I may describe it as a ship of our great territory. I would say that it appears to have been launched without the bottle being broken, cursed from the beginning.

We all know that the 1,045 metre structure was supposed to be the pride of...

Mr. Speaker, certainly I will be supporting the motion. I was proud to be able to second this.

Quite often, we often think of education as such an amazing thing and here we have an educational renewal document that many educators are telling me that they’re concerned about the lack of input. If we want to do it right, we have to make sure we get off on a good foot. Any home builder will tell you that you can’t construct a good, sound, quality home without building a solid foundation. I consider this 10-year plan, this renewal, should be a solid foundation, one that is so firm and so strong it...

Thank you. So, then, there are deficiencies. Okay, so how much was the negotiated contract negotiated for with the folks in Fort Providence in partnership with Ruskin? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My first set of oral questions was, if I may define it as chapter one on the Deh Cho Bridge today. Now chapter two, I’d like to talk about the deficiencies and certainly the outstanding deficiencies left on the Deh Cho Bridge. I see the Minister is flipping papers so I’ll do a little bit of a stretched out intro.

The issue is such that we need to fully understand what the deficiencies are. So, I’d like to ask the Minister about some of them in particular, but let’s start off by enlightening the public. With the list of deficiencies, although I don’t have them, would the...