Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to offer some general comments on the department and its budget. The first issue I want to speak to is in regard to the Aurora College. I want to state that I believe that it is very important for our society and in jurisdictions like the Territories to have an advanced education institution. I do believe that Aurora College has come a long way, but it does have a lot more potential to fulfill. Especially in light of the training needs and employment needs that we are faced with and will probably continue to be faced with with all the economic opportunities that are before us. I feel that there is a lot more we can do with respect to resourcing Aurora College and especially for me, the Yellowknife Campus.

During the discussions in committee, I was provided with statistical information from the department which shows me that the enrolment of students, the number of students being enrolled in the Yellowknife Campus is quite similar to the number enrolled in the Fort Smith campus. I appreciate that the Thebacha Campus in Fort Smith is the main campus and Yellowknife is the regional campus, but I do believe at a certain point the resources have to be comparable to the demands being placed on a facility. I believe that Yellowknife campus needs a lot more resources than it is being currently provided.

One of the more serious issues for the campus is the fact that it does not have a stand-alone campus and that now it's gotten to a situation where a lot of spaces are outside of the campus because the campus itself cannot sustain the demands that are being placed on it. Another of the more serious situations is the housing issue. I think the Members that are coming into the city are recognizing and living and experiencing firsthand what it's like to deal with the housing shortage and housing demand and high cost of housing in Yellowknife.

What is happening right now is that there's not enough housing for students at Aurora College and certainly they cannot afford to be in the market and rent apartments or anything like that being a full-time student while attending Aurora College. The Aurora College students have taken up, at least by my latest figure, 90 units at Northern United Place, for example. Those are units that would otherwise be available to other people in low-income categories or for seniors. I know there is a huge waiting list for seniors who normally would have gone into housing at Northern United Place and now they are lined up with everybody else and that line-up is not moving at all. Given that they don't have as long a line up at the Aven's Court, the independent living there, the situation is really dire. I think I need to stress this, and this is something I need to work on and I am going to work on and push the Minister and the government to address within the life of this Assembly.

Madam Chair, I am as well aware as anybody else here about the fiscal realities, but I do believe we still have money to operate and we cannot close our books and go home because we are faced with a deficit. It just means that we have to pay closer scrutiny to the money that we are spending and that we are paying close attention to the priorities that are being given to various items that are coming to us.

I also understand that during the discussion of this department's budget we were given lease costs and other expenses that go toward the Aurora College renting the facility at Northern United Place and it is not a small amount. We do spend a lot of money yearly already on these payments and I think there is an opportunity there for the government to not necessarily spend any more money than what it is now spending in that facility for utilities and such and rental costs and really do long-term planning to do a stand-alone campus building in Yellowknife Campus.

So I would like to ask the Minister at the moment what he has done in his time as Minister of ECE to look at this situation and what his plan of action is with respect to this issue. I understand he has, I'm sure, a myriad of issues that he's had to deal with, but I want to get some indication from the Minister if he has addressed his mind to this issue. Thank you.