Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Mackenzie gas project will be purchasing workforce housing. The Government of the Northwest Territories is not going to ATCO to say supply us with 1,400 camp beds so we can have these in the Northwest Territories. Our commitment through the Government of the Northwest Territories, as we have laid out to Members, totals about maybe $120 million. That is to do the groundwork, the development of subdivisions and in that area, conversions, tankage, and those things of setting them up in the communities. That is what we've committed to. We want to take a concept, if it is applied at the front end, we can take it at the back end and probably get a deal. That is what we are after, is get a deal that affords us suitable housing for people in the Northwest Territories so we can meet what Members have put on the floor and passed the motion of dealing with poor housing in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Oral questions. Written questions. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Villeneuve.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

The land lease only policy was adopted by this government to ensure that an adequate land base would be available for the AFN upon completion of the treaty implementation negotiations. They have received approval for an exemption to allow for transfers of parcels of land to the City of Yellowknife, in fee-simple title, on February 7, 2006.

1. What discussions or consultations took place with the parties affected by this decision to make an exemption on the LLOP?
2. If any consultation was done, was an agreement reached, or formally drafted, that allowed all parties to have input and discussion over?
3. If the government deferred the city's land requirements application until January 2006, why was the discussion to dispose of land in fee-simple title rushed? What prompted this rushed discussion to take place?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Written questions. Returns to written questions. Petitions. Reports of committees on the review of bills. Tabling of documents. Notices of motion. Notices of motion for the first reading of bills. First reading of bills. Second reading of bills. Consideration in committee of the whole of bills and other matters: Bill 18, Committee Reports 5, 6 and 7, with Mrs. Groenewegen in the chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We wish to continue deliberation of Education, Culture and Employment.

Thank you. We will do that after a lunch break.

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Okay. I call Committee of the Whole back to order. We're on Education, Culture and Employment, general comments. Ms. Lee. What? I'm sorry. That's the second time I've done that. Mr. Dent, would you like to bring witnesses into the chamber?

Yes, Madam Chair, please.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Does the committee agree?

Agreed. Thank you. Mr. Sergeant-at-Arms, would you please escort the witnesses in.

So we'll welcome back Mr. Devitt and Mr. Cleveland to the chamber. We are on general comments and I have Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple questions on the opening statement of the Minister and one has to do with the kindergarten funding. The government will now provide full-time kindergarten funding so that now the schools could have money for the program they have been providing for a little while. But I'm interested in the net benefit of this funding in that there are going to be some changes to funding formula. I believe the funding formula that requires 60 percent of student attendance, for example, is going to come into play this year. Also, there is talk of adult students over 21 will not be included in the funding formula. So I'm interested in knowing what kind of impact that will have on the school system, I guess in particular to Yellowknife schools, because school boards get a global budget and then they have to distribute it to the schools. It's not always clear when we're approving money here how these funds will translate. I guess what I'm really interested in is, how much increase would the school boards be expected to see from these changes? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not sure we have the detail of information by school board that Ms. Lee is looking for right now. We could provide that to her and members of this committee fairly quickly.

The actual changes -- not one where we are cutting off funding to school boards for students who are 22 years of age and over -- we are reducing the funding to 50 percent of what would normally be provided for a full-time student. But Ms. Lee is right, that we are also insisting that attendance figures change to reflect 60 percent attendance for funding, as compared to 40 percent attendance. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Ms. Lee.

Thank you. If I could have that net fiscal benefit, as Mr. Roland would like to say, for the school boards under these changes to funding formulas or funding rules ASAP, please.

The second question that I have with respect to the Minister's opening statement and the riding of Yellowknife is the school facilities issue. Madam Chair, there used to be in the books money for a new school, I believe it was about $16 million. It was there when this Assembly started and I don't believe it's there anymore. Now there is actually money allocated larger than that for renovation. That study, those decisions, I think, are based on the Facilities Management Committee, which comes out of the 10-year education facility plan. I'm just concerned about where this is heading. I know the Minister has informed me that he's appointed a new chair and he sees this as a 10-year long...It's a committee that would be set up for a 10-year plan, or for 10 years or whatever. I mean no disrespect to anybody on the board or the chair, that's not what this is about at all, but I am beginning to question the efficacy of the Minister studying these issues to death. I don't understand why we had a school set up and now we find that we don't. You know, it's not like these educational facilities report recommendations get adopted. In the end it's really up to us what we do with our facilities money. It's really up to the GNWT whether there will be a new school or not, or the money should go into renovations. I have to tell you that the experience that we are going through from the latest facilities review is not a positive one. I don't know if we're making anybody happy with this process. I'm not sure if there was any new information found there that could not be determined by the Minister and the department. So I just don't understand what the point is of this exercise if, indeed, in the final analysis, the final decisions as to where the schools go or whether there will be a new school or not or renovations and what renovations will take place and when, that all is decided in this House.

We know already that the latest facility reviews indicated that Yellowknife needs a free-standing Aurora Campus, but the Minister has decided that is not going to be his priority. There are lots of parents and teachers in the city who believe that there's a need for a new school, but that's not going to happen. I believe the review report said that the renovations to Sissons was as important as the renovations to St. Joseph, but the department and the Minister...I don't mean, like, all of what I say here is directed toward the Minister, not to any of the officials because I do believe it is the Minister who is accountable to us.

So I need to ask the Minister why he needs to...You know, this is his third year into the mandate. What more does he need to study when we already have the power to make decisions about what we can and cannot do? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to go back to Ms. Lee's previous question, I want to make sure that she understands that the numbers that I can provide relating to the impact on the boards for the change in funding for the full-day kindergarten will be estimates, but we will endeavour to get that information to her as quickly as possible.

Madam Chair, in 2003, the expectation was that in Yellowknife, because of the population growth, that we would in the not-too-distant future need to see an extra school being built. However, it's become clear since that time that the population growth in Yellowknife is not happening in the kindergarten to Grade 12 population. This is something of a revelation to us. It's not something that was foreseen; the change in the demographic makeup. As a result, we were looking at what we needed to do with our facilities in Yellowknife.

There were different pressures. Three of the school boards in town were demanding new facilities. So in order to try and see where we were heading with that, we put together a group to discuss where we needed to be on a 10-year education facility plan in Yellowknife. That's not

dissimilar to the approach that was taken back in the early '90s when, again, there was some pressure for a new school and we got the school boards in Yellowknife to work together to develop a 10-year plan. It's also very similar to the process that has been undertaken in Inuvik where the community has worked together with different stakeholders to examine what they need for schools and have, through their process of discussion, come up with a different response to what we had initially proposed for the community as a result.

Again, we've had similar situations in other communities where, you know, like Tulita, where the community itself has had some input into the planning process to make sure that the plan reflects the wish of the community.

I was hoping, through this process, that we would get a better understanding of what was needed. The report certainly confirmed the issue that there was adequate space in Yellowknife, but it also indicated that we needed to redistribute students in Yellowknife. It says that very clearly in the report. It recommends that the School Facilities Planning Committee be convened to take a look at how that might take place. So I'm following up on the recommendations that were made in this 10-year facility plan. Which, by the way, was made up of representatives from all of the various stakeholders in the educational field in Yellowknife, as well.

In terms of why the college is not in here, we talked about that yesterday. The college wouldn't normally fit in because of the timing that we know for a typical capital plan it doesn't need to start until next year. As I have already said, it is my intention to bring the proposal for the college campus forward in the next business plan that goes before the Members. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't have a lot of time left here, but you know, I just still don't see, I don't hear from his answers what he's prepared to do to make some decisions in regards to school facilities in Yellowknife. He has on his hands, I think, everybody unhappy. I just think that in the third year of his mandate as Minister, it is time for him to act on some decisions. He doesn't need to hire a chair to work with elected chairs of boards to talk about what to do about the space requirements in Yellowknife. He doesn't need any more study to tell him that the one school board needs a new school, or a new space and renovation to old buildings. Even if there was a study shown that there was no need for new schools, I could tell you that one of the schools that's there is 30 years old. That school's been there since I was a teenager, or younger. You know. I mean, chances are one of them is going to become, it's becoming a health and safety hazard, and the Minister is willing to just take a report that says we don't need a new school, and then send another group away for 10 years or whatever to talk about what they want to talk about with spacing. I mean, when is he going to act on, and what is his plan as to what to do about the demand for a new school by one board, and the overwhelming need for renovations to almost all schools in the other school board? What we ended up here is with the same money renovating one school and, well, more than the money for a new school, and then what we have is one very old school that is in desperate need of renovation that's not going to see a cent for renovations until the year 2009. He keeps wanting to have this group going just so that he can show that he's doing something about it and avoiding his decision-making. So I'd like to know from him, as a Minister with one year left in his mandate, what is his vision about the facilities issues for Yellowknife? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. What I have done, and Ms. Lee's right, we've wound up in the capital plan with significantly more money that what was shown for the construction of a new school. There are a number of schools that are seeing renovation monies that weren't there before. But we have to fit everything into the limited capital plan. So the timing and the scheduling all gets worked around and massaged into that.

There are, I'm sure that Ms. Lee can talk to other Members of this House, there will be very few that have seen the projects in their communities, the schools advance exactly as they would like to see them advance. This government has a fiscal reality that it has to work within and we're doing our best to advance the projects.

However, I would point out that we have managed to add in funding in this budget for two other schools in YK 1 that were not there before, to conclude the renovations to Mildred Hall, as well as the renovations to Sir John. Previously, that money was not there. We've managed to find extra money in our capital plan for that, as well as making sure that they have money for the renovations to J.H. Sissons. Now, we're not talking about either one of them starting in 2006-07. The planning money for Ecole St. Joseph would be in 2007-08 and it would be in 2008-09 for J.H. Sissons. But that's, at this point, the way the capital plan is. At some point we may have some good news from Ottawa and maybe we'll be able to advance things from what we show right now. It would be my hope that we could. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. General comments. I'm going to ask the committee for their opinion. I believe Ms. Lee has spoken to general comments six times now, for a total of one hour of general comments. Quite often it has been our practice in the past to survey committee members as to whether it's the majority who wants to carry on with the detail, or stay on general comments. So I'll ask the committee for their indication on that. What's the wish of the committee now? Mr. Pokiak.