Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to speak for the seventh time and hopefully this is my record. Last general comment, but, Mr. Chairman, I think we should be mindful of the fact that we did change the process this year for the budget review where we cut out the normal committee review process. I'm sorry to be seventh in a row to speak or something like that, but I can't help it if I have lots to address here.
Mr. Chairman, I just want to say one more thing, and I will reserve my questions for details and there will be many at that, but with respect to general comments on the Yellowknife Facilities Plan Committee I have to tell you, once again, for the record, how unsatisfied I am with this process, Mr. Chairman. If we are not careful with this, the Minister is going to leave behind a humungous, colossal mess here. I respect all the players that are in it, but this is becoming a symbol of what you do when Ministers don't want to make the decisions that a Minister is paid to make. Now he's hiring people to make his decisions. Board chairs get into this committee, I mean they're elected, they have things to do, they know what the space needs are and what the school needs are. They don't need to have a hired board chair to organize their meeting because other than that, what is the purpose of this committee? They can make all the recommendations they want to about what to do about facilities, but the ultimate decision is with the Minister and this House.
I tell you, there are lots of schools and parents advisory committees who spend hours raising money. I'm sure they could figure out lots of things to do with the money that the Minister chooses to spend to do study after study and to set up committee after committee and asking them to do things that he should be doing. He should get his sleeves rolled up and go in there and talk to these board chairs and get things done.
Minister Miltenberger has made it a process. He set up a Joint Leadership Committee where he meets with the chairs of hospital boards to find out what's going on. I mean, the Minister was asked to chair this committee and he doesn't want to do it because, I don't know what reasons, he wants to be neutral. I think that was the answer, and I think that's just another answer for indecision and inaction. I'm telling you, there's an emergency happening in the city. We have, as a collective, and we're all responsible for this, and I don't
want to leave behind a legacy where we walk in this Assembly, I walk in as a Yellowknife Member with the budget money there for a new school and I'm going to walk out of here with no new school and a 30-year-plus old school with no renovation money and every teacher, and every child, every student, and every board not happy with the process because the Minister refuses to do what he's supposed to do. He says that asking questions, you know, he accuses other people wanting his job, but he has no problem hiring someone else to do his job.
So I have a real issue with that and this facilities review is not going to be able to recommend to go with anything. The final decision is with the Minister. So I would suggest to him that he start doing his job in the third year of his mandate and sort this out, because otherwise it's going to be 15 months of a colossal mess that he's not going to be able to clean up. So let me just leave it at that and I'm going to wait for the line-by-line detail. Thank you.