Thank you, Mr. Dent. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Then I would challenge the Minister to provide that information and show that we have fire marshal information to prove that we are running these facilities safely. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm satisfied that the safety of students in our system is ensured by the way in which the schools are administered. If the Member has a concern, I invite him to investigate with the office of the fire marshal so he gets some understanding of how that office undertakes its job.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Oral questions. The honourable Member from the Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Transportation. I'd like to ask the Minister of Transportation if he would consider extending the winter road in the Sahtu for an extra two more weeks, at least to the end of the month, in terms of the cold weather and if he would give that consideration to the people?

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. We have received requests from numerous communities in the Member's riding to keep the road open as long as possible, and I just want to say that it's all weather related. I think the land use permits do have a specific date and there is a date in our contracts as well and we can close it early or later, but it looks like the weather is holding out and it will be day by day, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister certainly has a lot of power, even changing the weather so it's colder, colder times.

---Laughter

So I'll ask the Minister, Mr. Speaker, in terms of his consideration for extending the winter road, does that also mean that there will be some work done on the winter road as it's fairly bumpy in some of the communities? Some of the comments by some of the members and even from the heavy equipment operators and truck drivers are saying that it's pretty bumpy on these roads here. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. We will continue to keep the road open as long as possible and the industry that's operating in that area is interested in keeping the road open as long as possible as well. We will extend every effort to do that, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, thank you. Mr. Speaker, I'd ask the Minister in his previous commitment in the previous session in terms of committing to come to the Sahtu and talk to people about some of the road conditions that we have experienced in the last couple of years and some things that we could do to save government money in terms of how do we improve our winter roads in the Sahtu. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I'll be glad to travel to the Sahtu region to discuss the winter road issues and many others that he has in his riding, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Oral questions. The honourable Member from Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, in case the Member wasn't listening, the issue of school utilization and capacity, the figures that are given for capacity are not based on safety. If you want to think about it, think about when the community uses a gym. There can be hundreds of people in that school, way more than what the school is rated for, and that's not a fire hazard. So schools are designed to hold a lot more people than what we would say that they would use for teaching.

There are other ways around to accommodate the different space. For instance, at St. Pat's in Yellowknife, which is shown as running over capacity, they're using classrooms in Weledeh, which isn't running at full capacity, but the students are still shown as attending St. Pat's even though they're going 100 yards down the hall and using a classroom in what is a different school. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, maybe if the Minister would hear the concerns on this side of the House, the fact is it's taken almost three years to finally get to this issue to start dealing with the capacity problem and now the only way to do this is to attempt to force, or, well, I don't know, slight of hand if I may say, to get one school board to give up a school. It's a fact this has been an issue for a number of years. So, Mr. Speaker, why has the Minister been delaying any type of decision? Is he waiting for someone else to make the decision? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have been working with the boards in Yellowknife to try and resolve this situation for several years now. We are in a situation, though, where a previous government at some point decided to give ownership of schools in Yellowknife to the boards. So since this government doesn't, like it does in other communities, still own all of the schools, even though we pay for 100 percent of them, we don't have the flexibility to determine who uses the school facilities and when. So we've been working to try and resolve that. We have a situation where in Yellowknife we have, right now, 843 empty spaces. Eight hundred forty-three empty spaces.