Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to direct my next line of questions to the Minister of Public Works and Services, Mr. McLeod.
I’d like to ask Minister McLeod if DPW considers the Adult Learning Centre unfit to occupy. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Minister responsible for Public Works and Services, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The inspections that have been done on the facility indicate a number of safety concerns. We have advised the department that the building should be vacated and that the facility should be dismantled. Thank you.
In response to my question before, the Minister of Education said that another engineer’s study is being planned. I’d like to ask the Minister: is there a second engineer’s report or study being planned, and when can we expect the results of that?
Mr. Speaker, we did have a request to have a second opinion on the safety and structural concerns of this facility. We did hire a third party to do that for us. We recently got our results in, and they indicate that the facility has become a safety issue and that we should move forward on the recommendations.
In fact, the assessment raised the level of risk from substantial to considerable, and we’ve recommended to ECE that the building be vacated and demolished by sometime this fall. Thank you.
I think the Minister can understand my concern about a facility that these folks need in order to have a place to do their studies.
I’d like to ask the Minister if in the report there are any recommendations that may have been made by the engineers as to a temporary fix or being able to get maybe another year or two years of use out of the building until they find a suitable location for the Adult Learning Centre. Thank you.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, there was some costing assessed to see if we could do some temporary fixes to bring the facility to a stage where we could continue to use this facility. These costs were in excess of $7 million, and it’s not an option we’d like to follow.
We would prefer that ECE look at either a new facility or modular units. We were considering Arctic Tern, but I think that’s not an option anymore, not for the time being.
There are a number of options that are under review. ECE is looking at different ways to do this, and we will be working with them to try to locate another location, including the one that the Minister of Education has mentioned: the ENR building. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Yes. Thank you. Arctic Tern is not an option, and with the support of my colleagues I hope it will never be an option.
I also want to say that the Inuvik Curling Club is not an option. It was an option before, and it’s not going to be an option again.
I’d like to ask the Minister if he’d be willing to share that report with me. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, yes, we’d be happy to share that information. In fact, we’ve committed to the council of Inuvik to sit down and talk about different issues within that community, so we’ll probably be talking to them regarding this issue also. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
