Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I was speaking about the polytechnic transition and wasn't able to fully finish out my thoughts, and I wanted to share those today.
Mr. Speaker, I want to be clear that when I'm advocating for the polytechnic transition, I am not advocating for something that would be a zero sum game where some communities lose, one community gains. That is a restrictive vision, and I'm tired of it going around because what I want to advocate for is something expansive. This is not about concentrating resources in one community, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, when I think of an expansive vision of the college, I think of something like establishing an ENRTP program which they've talked about doing and which I'm a graduate of, one that would bring students into various communities in the territory. Imagine that program bringing students up to Inuvik for a year and having them work on High Arctic research with whales, with the ocean, with things like that, and then moving around to different communities, working with elders, working in different ways.
Mr. Speaker, imagine a governance program that did something similar, a governance program which taught students about the various different governance models being established in the Northwest Territories and embedded them in those systems, a program which brought students into the communities and have them working with people who are doing the work of implementing governance right now. That would be a very exciting and attractive program. I think of students graduating from a program like that, the employability that they would have. This is the kind of programming that I think people would come from around the world to experience.
And when we think about our community governments, they are constantly coming to us and talking about capacity building. Imagine a program that embedded graduates and embedded students in these governments and helped them work with that capacity building and helped them work with that government. I think that's something that students from this territory could get very excited about. It would prepare them for careers in these governments. That's the kind of thing that we need to be doing. I think it would be very exciting, Mr. Speaker, and I hope we get on with it.
Mr. Speaker, I do want to highlight the fact that Yellowknife's campus is inadequate, and I want us to seek funding to improve it. That was clearly laid out in the facility's master plan, and I think we need to go through with that. But it's not about taking from someone else and giving to another.
Look at the situation we're in with the CLCs. We need programming that works for the communities too. We have to be thinking about everybody when we're thinking about a vision for the college. I think it's clear, and it was clear in the foundational review, that the college as it is is not working for the best interests of the whole territory. The vision that I want to work for and what I want to change is that narrative itself. So let's get together, let's do expansive visioning for this program, for this college, and let's get a polytechnic university that we can all be proud of. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member from Range Lake.
