Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Education with regard to the whole incident in Fort McPherson where we had a crisis with the school burning down. Does this government have in place any sort of emergency measures for an incident such as a school burning down or a bus crash? Do they have a plan in place to be able to react to incidents such as this? It's my understanding that this must be the third school that has been destroyed by fire in the last number of years. Does the government have a plan like that in place?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We don't have plans in place for all of the 58 communities in which we have schools, for such eventualities as a school burning down. The department always is prepared to react very quickly to a situation that requires attention. For instance, the Member mentions the situation in Fort McPherson. Within hours of finding out that the school had burned down, the department had put in place a team to respond to the situation and had set up linkages between the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, Public Works, the divisional board and the CEC in Fort McPherson. I think that Members will find that the department is prepared to move very quickly in those situations where a response is required immediately.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With regard to the department not having a plan in place, I think it may be helpful that we do have some sort of a planning process implemented so when any incidents like this happen, we are not reacting; we're more in a role of being prepared.

If it doesn't happen again, great; but it may happen again in the near future. I think this may be the opportunity to seriously look at what happened in Fort McPherson and also see what the implications are on the impacts of the community having to use other facilities, and also the impact on the students because they are in an out-of-school facility where they are basically housed in small rooms. I would like to ask the Minister if he would seriously consider looking at developing such a policy or plan to deal with an incident like that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can commit to the Member that the department will examine our response in this issue and make sure that we learn from the incident anything we can. I can't promise that we will develop an emergency measures policy for each and every school. I think it's much better to have an overall policy which guarantees that the government works very quickly to deal with the problems that come up. It would be impossible for us to perceive what might happen to any one of the more than 60 schools we have in the Northwest Territories. My experience in this situation indicates that the department is really quite prepared to put together a response. I think between the FMB response, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and Public Works, that they've demonstrated that we can deal with emergency situations. Yes, we will take a look at the specifics of this instance and make sure we learn any lessons that are there for us to learn.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am glad to hear that from the Minister. Could he use the incident in Fort McPherson as the basis of this study? We are presently in the process of building a school, but it will probably be a few months before we are able to house these students in a new facility. So I would like to ask the Minister, at this time, if he can seriously look at using McPherson as the example and as the stage for developing this plan at this time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that is what I had committed to in my previous answer to the Member; that we would look closely at how this situation had developed, the government's response to it and make sure that if there were improvements needed to our response, that we would put them in place for any future situations. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to go back to the subject of Nunavut funding. I think it is an interesting note for us to take into consideration that the federal government cut this government by $150 million in funding. Then they announced that they are going to give us $150 million, which is really $120 million, to set up Nunavut. That should be remembered by Members. I have a question with regard to that to the Premier. Do we have a Cabinet committee that is looking at and coordinating the Nunavut set-up?

Do we have a resource committee made up of the public service that does investigative work to tell us how much it is going to cost incrementally in 1999? Is that in existence?