Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Member for Yellowknife Centre making this motion. Mr. Speaker, it was only four years ago that the first school was established in Kakisa. They do have a resident teacher that lives in the trailer, and they have built a small portion to the
trailer that they are using right now as a small classroom for the students.
Before that, Mr. Speaker, students in Kakisa used to go to Fort Simpson. That was pretty hard on the parents as well as on the students themselves. The only time they actually had the opportunity to go home was during Christmas and Easter and during the summer months. This is the first time that they had a small school.
I had written a letter to the Minister of Education before Mr. Allooloo became Minister. When Mr. Kakfwi was Minister, he did get a small school in his constituency of Colville Lake, which is the equivalent size of Kakisa. It was on that basis that I asked the Minister at that time to consider Kakisa for a small school.
Mr. Speaker, the intent of the motion is not that the school should be constructed this summer, but I would like the government to seriously look at Kakisa's need and perhaps look at the possibility of having a small school constructed during the next four years. We also have a lot of adults in Kakisa that are full-time trappers that really did not have a formal education; we even have young people at my age that did not have that much opportunity to go to elementary or high school, that would like to learn, and perhaps this would give them an opportunity. Presently, even though they do have a literacy program in the rest of the communities, Kakisa does not have that because there is no place to have such a program. So I would like to ask the Members to support the motion.