Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak on an issue that has been a concern for a quite a number of years in the community and it is around the Aurora campus facility in Inuvik. It has been known for many years that it needs replacement. We have gone through the idea of a regular capital project and it has been in the five-year capital plan for some time.
The facility itself is holding together, but just doing that, Mr. Speaker. In fact, it was agreed by the community to allow the campus to jump ahead and put one of our other schools behind in the capital plan to ensure that we can continue to offer programs with Aurora campus in the community. There is much demand for programs there as we are seeing the development occurring in the Beaufort Delta region.
Mr. Speaker, one of the things that occurred when the Aurora campus was being discussed was Public Works and Services put a plan together for Aurora College and this government viewed that and accepted the report, I believe, and had the campus put forward. Since that time, Mr. Speaker, it has gone a couple of ways. One is when P3s were discussed by a previous government the campus was put onto that list as one of the things that should be moved forward, but when the government then decided not to carry on with P3s and that there will not be public/private partnerships, the campus fell back onto the normal capital plan of this government.
Since then, Mr. Speaker, as it came on to the plan, the government has stated that there has not been enough funding to build both the campus and the student residence at the same time. In fact, we are going ahead now, as stated in the main estimates, with the plan to build the Aurora campus facility itself, but lacking a student residence. Now this government has done a number of things to try and address the student residence, but it is doing things, Mr. Speaker, in a forum, as I see it, which is just prolonging the situation and increasing potential further costs by taking little side routes to try to deal with the issue. Later on during question period I will have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.