Thank you, Mr. Chair. A couple of things. I think that we've seen quite clearly that there are safety issues at both the Brown and Green housing. We've seen a copy of an e-mail to that effect, and I don't think that that's something that should be dealt with lightly. But it's quite clear, from the capital plan, that the department isn't prepared to deal with those fire marshal safety issues this year, and that's a concern for me. I think if there's anything that we need to be talking about, it's dealing with those issues right now to make sure that those students are in a safe environment.

So I think our first step, whether it's $200,000 or $250,000 per housing unit -- I'm not sure what it is, we haven't seen a list of those safety concerns detailed -- I think they need to be taken care of now. I would certainly support and urge the department to come back with a supp for that money to deal with that this year, not wait. I mean if these are real concerns, there's no point in putting them off until something happens in the future. I don't know if this $149,000 is set to do that in the Green House but not the Brown. It's a concern for me.

The other issue, I think that is critical here, is the fact that we're prepared to spend $1.3 million to renovate some seriously old buildings, when the numbers that the government has given us to replace would be $1.7 million. That seems so close to me that I don't understand why we wouldn't build new. We're going to tear these things down to the foundations and to the structures, and I think in those reports it indicates we haven't even opened up walls. When we talk about $1.3 million for renovation, we haven't opened a wall yet to find asbestos or God knows what else. So I think that's a $1.3 million moving target. If we know the cost to build new would be in the $1.7 area, I think we're much safer to talk about building new. It doesn't make any sense to be renovating.

So my suggestion would be to come back for supplementary funds to deal with the safety issues now and forget about renovating these things. Let's see a plan to replace them in future years. But they should be up against all the other capital projects in Education and should have to compete, but let's talk about replacing not repainting and adding a little bit more insulation to some buildings that are 40 or 60 or something years old. I'll be supporting the reduction of this $149,000, because I'm not sure exactly what this is going to do. But I would urge the department to come back for supplementary funds to deal with the safety concerns in these two buildings this year, not in three or five years or sometime when it seems that that's really the furthest date that we can possibly stand before we have a critical situation. So I will be supporting the reduction of $149,000.