Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions today for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment going back to my Member’s statement when I talked about a stand-alone campus for Aurora College located here in Yellowknife.
Yesterday I was asking some questions of the Minister of Health and Social Services about planning dollars and found out that there’s $900,000 in planning for Stanton. I’m wondering if Education has any planning money in the works for a new stand-alone campus for Aurora College here in Yellowknife.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. What I can tell the Member is that this is an area that we’ve been discussing for a number of years now. The lease is coming up as well. We need to plan for that this fall. The stand-alone campus we’ve been discussing with other jurisdictions as well, Northwest Territories, Yukon, Nunavut, and other jurisdictions about how we can move forward as a university of the North. We talk about the campus here and we talk about a university of the North building on the existing campuses.
This is an area that’s important for our department and we’ll continue to push forward. I will keep the Members up to speed on what’s been happening with our discussion. A recent discussion that I had just the other day I will provide that information to the Members as well.
The current space that the college utilizes at Northern United Place obviously isn’t conducive to a college campus. There’s no parking, there’s not enough room there. They obviously need a new building. I’d like to ask the Minister if there will be any planning dollars in the capital plan come this fall. I know there’s going to be an election in October, but I’d like to ask if there will be any planning dollars for this campus come the capital plan this fall.
That’s a discussion we need to have. I can’t stand here and say, yes, we’re going to commit dollars. We need to discuss further with the capital planning projects that will be before us. If we need to commit a certain amount of dollars towards the planning studies for the college campus, then we will do that. We need to discuss that further. At that point in time we need to highlight what the priorities are. This is one of the priorities we’ve been working towards, so we will be discussing it further if we need to allocate the funding at that time.
Obviously I think the planning dollars are going to be important to getting the government’s commitment to building a stand-alone college campus here in Yellowknife. Yesterday we found out there’s $900,000 in planning for Stanton. I’m thinking that’s coming from the capital plan that’s being developed by the government. If one Minister can say there is money, why can’t the other Minister say that there’s going to be some money? Where is the commitment in the capital plan that’s coming this fall to get planning dollars for the Aurora College stand-alone campus here in Yellowknife? We need a commitment.
I’m fully committed to working towards the planning stages. We are at that point where we’re working towards the capital planning projects. I did indicate in this House that I’m committed to working towards that and identifying dollars. The planning stages are in play and the capital planning process will be before us this summer. We’ll move forward in this regard as a discussion and then see what comes out of that. If we need to allocate funding, then definitely we’ll talk about that at that time.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
