Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the Minister for his answer. In the smaller communities, the non-tax-based communities, in those cases, the school is the only educational facility in the community. It has to be able to accommodate the elementary students, the grade extensions, a lot of time the college students, Aboriginal Head Start, any other educational learning program there is, the library, distance learning. A lot of times, you can look at these facilities and anybody that walked off the street would be able to see these facilities are full. They are overcrowded, they are beyond capacity for what they are designed for. But when it comes to analysis by this government, they say the school is underutilized. When I looked at the school on the reserve, I was quite concerned, and the Minister is aware because we looked at it together. There were students being taught in the hallways. The Aboriginal language instructor is walking around with a shopping cart that he carries his material from class to class with. There are six or seven staff people sharing one office. We still couldn't find any money for that. I am really shocked that we have facilities, communities that have multi facilities and some are sitting half empty. Yet, in certain communities where there is only one facility we can't find any dollars. That really concerns me. In this case, the community had to pay. The community, the band council, had to come up and pay for a facility. Is that the new trend of this government? Is that what we are going to expect communities to do from now on, digging in their core funding or whatever and start paying for facilities in their communities?
Michael McLeod 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 320
See context to find out what was said next.