Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to say something about the situation of the hostel in Fort Simpson. For many years there was a student hostel in Simpson, and back around 1988, I think, there was a Fire Marshal's inspection of the place and at that time the Deh ChoRegional Council had the contract with the government to run that facility. I was involved as an interim executive director at that time, and I remember Stephen Kakfwi was the Minister of Education at that time, and what happened there is that the department, at that time, wanted to shut the place down. Their excuse is that they did not have enough money to renovate that facility. My recollection is that the figure was around $500,000 to upgrade the facility to meet the standards of the Fire Marshal. It did not have proper material in the walls and the doors, and the electrical was not up to code.
We had to shut the place down and it sat vacant for a couple of years. The Department of Education renovated a certain part of it. Social Services is in the senior boys' section, for people who understand that hostel, and the other part is for the adult education section. There is a library in one section of the school; the resource room for education is in there; the special language people; and Deh Cho Divisional board is in there. The whole hostel is used at the present time.
I recall, as interim executive director, we did have a plan and we proposed, at that time, to build three small hostel units which will be run by the regional council. We were turned down at this time. When the plan for this hostel was coming up, I wondered if there was any long-term strategy plan back in 1988 on the Department of Education's part. The fact is that presently we have students from the surrounding communities living in home boarding, but we are at capacity and we need more places for students to go to. Maybe we need more HAP units in there so we can accommodate the students. But that is a different issue.
--- Laughter
At the present time, I am told that we have about 27 grade 12 and senior students away from the community, and if we bring them back into Simpson we need additional places. My understanding of this motion is that for 1992-93 there was a hostel in the capital estimates, a 10-room hostel in the capital estimates, and the $800,000 extra is for another 12-unit hostel. That was my understanding of the motion, and I do not see how some of my colleagues would think it is something new. It is in the documents that I have received, and I thought everybody understood that. Mahsi.