Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The first point I want to address is the one that Mr. Roland has already started us off with, and this is the capital allocation process. When the department is looking at its highest priority needs and deciding where it is going to spend its capital dollars, I would assume that if we take the college, for instance, that a campus with a wait list for student housing and a campus that isn't allowing any of its local students into student housing because of the shortage of space, would rise to the top ahead of a college where there is excess capacity. I believe that we are getting accurate information on the facilities in Smith and that they are very old and they do need to be renovated or repaired. It sounds like even Breynat Hall, which isn't on the list, is very old and needs some work. But I would question whether or not a lot of this renovation needs to be done when we have a massive waiting list in Yellowknife at Aurora College. There are fire code issues; those certainly need to be addressed immediately. I would like to ask the Minister to give us information, again, because when the committee asked for this the first time, it looked like there were huge vacancies in Fort Smith in college housing. This was even after Fort Smith students were allowed to enter into the college housing and they are allowed to do that as a last resort when there is nobody else in queue for that housing. Fort Smith students are allowed to take those units and they were certainly the community most represented in those housing units, more than any others. You would see in Inuvik and you would see in Yellowknife, no Yellowknifers, no Inuvik students in those respective campuses. So let's just take Breynat Hall. If we accepted that we are not going to have any doubling up of students, how many vacant rooms do we have in Breynat Hall right now, even after Fort Smith students are admitted, in this current year? Thank you.
Brendan Bell on General Comments
In the Legislative Assembly on February 25th, 2003. See this statement in context.
General Comments
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
February 24th, 2003
Page 315
See context to find out what was said next.